You think Amazon, Microsoft, and Google taken together are not a major customer of Intel? That's preposterous. I bet they are #1, #2, and #3 buyers of Xeon CPUs taken individually.
If they were buying directly, Intel would have even more leverage to milk them, than if they stood behind the back of some beefy OEM.
No, they build their own servers. They definitely aren't racking Dell or HP servers.
Even Amazon's x86 based servers are extremely custom. That whole "Nitro" system isn't exactly a USB stick, and AWS is often using customized variants of Intel processors in their servers.
Let me repeat that: Intel literally makes custom processors specifically for AWS.
> If they were buying directly, Intel would have even more leverage to milk them, than if they stood behind the back of some beefy OEM.
That's not how bulk buying works... at all.
The scale of AWS is so much larger than you seem to think it is.
Sort of. It's the same mask for everyone with the per customer special features either fused off, or just requiring a special MSR knock sequence.
AWS operates at a large enough scale that they do exactly that, and AWS already purchases directly from Intel, both of which are my main points. Baybal2 doesn’t seem to be aware of either of these facts based on their comment.
An option to fuse an individual performance profile, or few more ME features doesn't amount to be something really custom.
Why can't you just ask questions instead of misleading people?
With my knowledge of their sales tactic, I would imagine Intel could've simply said "You are free to buy AMD," with full knowledge that just few years ago their clients had no other option than coming back to them eventually.
Yes, they buy from Quanta, Supermicro, Wistron etc, the ones who make servers for Dell, and HP.
> Let me repeat that: Intel literally makes custom processors specifically for AWS.
Some unlockable features, and perf profiles. Those weird SKUs popup on liquidation sale websites from time to time.
Unless this is some kind of performance art, you really should stop commenting and switch to reading.
Same difference, compared to building their own from parts. I don't think parent's point lies in the OEM vs ODM semantics detail.