Today's CPUs from AMD and Intel are going after the volume cloud market with a range of CPUs with a particular configuration of functional units, cores, PCI-e lanes, memory channels, etc. They both push an eco system of motherboards, compilers, operating systems, libraries, and application tuning.
ARM brings (the platform, not just the reference chips) a healthy eco system and allows Huwai to make their own decisions on what the market needs and doesn't automatically give most of the profit to AMD and Intel. Keep in mind that for the first time in several decades Intel and AMD chips doubled in price, power usage, and performance in the last generation.
When buying whitebox servers most of the profit is going to AMD or Intel, not supermicro or similar.
Part of the problem with competing with the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds is that they more assuredly are getting better CPU prices than you will. If you can make your own CPU
So given Linux's maturity and increasing activity with arm on the server side the barrier to entry to competing with Intel and AMD is lowering. This combined with doubling in CPU prices makes AMD and Intel much more of a target than they were 2 years ago.
ARM brings (the platform, not just the reference chips) a healthy eco system and allows Huwai to make their own decisions on what the market needs and doesn't automatically give most of the profit to AMD and Intel. Keep in mind that for the first time in several decades Intel and AMD chips doubled in price, power usage, and performance in the last generation.
When buying whitebox servers most of the profit is going to AMD or Intel, not supermicro or similar.
Part of the problem with competing with the Amazon, Google, and Microsoft clouds is that they more assuredly are getting better CPU prices than you will. If you can make your own CPU
So given Linux's maturity and increasing activity with arm on the server side the barrier to entry to competing with Intel and AMD is lowering. This combined with doubling in CPU prices makes AMD and Intel much more of a target than they were 2 years ago.