Does Google Threaten Intel’s Web Server Processor Market?
Is Google about to step into the ring with Intel over server processors?
Are monopolies made to be broken? This age-old question has resurfaced recently with news that Google, a virtual monopoly in the search engine business, is possibly considering building its own ARM-based processor to achieve closer synergies between hardware and software in its worldwide collection of data centers.
This direction threatens Intel, a monopoly in the chip processor market, who relies on Google for about 4 to 5 percent of its annual revenue, with the search giant being its 5th largest customer.
Intel, using Moore’s Law to produce powerful Xeon processors that power the majority of servers being used in high-bandwidth web hosting companies, has in the last several years been inclined to re-factor its attention. Its new focus has been the huge growth in Smartphone usage around the world, which requires processors with more juice in terms of RAM and memory on smaller surface areas. The development of its Atom microprocessor was originally used by companies like SeaMicro to tackle CPU energy consumption and reduce 90 percent of the components that appear on server boards, perfect for smartphones.
This innovation surprised even Intel and has influenced trends in how server boards are being utilized in the hosting industry.
Google has followed these developments closely and recognizes the potential to save on operating expenses for running millions of servers around the world, hence the desire to possibly produce, or at least ‘design’, its own processor.
Intel’s share price has fluctuated downwards upon this rumor, and could threaten its 95 percent monopoly in the web server market. Its new Atom C2000 series could, however, be its savior, which could deliver up to 700 percent faster performance and 600 percent improved energy-efficiencies.
According to the stock market analysis website, SeekingAlpha, “Its best feature is that it emphasizes per-thread performance. Intel dropped the old symmetric multithreading used in previous Atom processors. [It] now uses out-of-order execution to extract instruction level parallelism.”
There is thus the potential for Intel to meet Google’s needs by building a micro server for Google with up to 1000 Atom C2000 processors inside it. The result being a higher computing capacity and better energy efficiency than previous Intel server chip generations.
Further, they are 100 percent compatible with Google’s existing x86 generation.