> Amazon could be designing their own core right now
Would require an architectural license and lots of talent and time.
Getting stock Neoverse cores is an incredible deal for them, this is probably a big part of the reason they can offer cheaper services from their chips.
Arm cores aren't really all that behind, there are just tendencies for wildly incorrect comparisons (past Arm cores vs upcoming competition cores, scale-targeted configurations vs workstation-targeted ones, etc.)
Of course, the ARM tax. Is there any reason why that would be a problem for them to get?
> and lots of talent and time.
Well just more talent than ARM Ltd.
> Getting stock Neoverse cores is an incredible deal for them,
What's the incredible deal? IP licenses are the other part of ARM's business model.
> this is probably a big part of the reason they can offer cheaper services from their chips.
The problem is when other companies buy the exact same core or customers need single thread performance other designs offer, and then Amazon decides they can make a better design themselves. Like what Apple did.
> Arm cores aren't really all that behind, there are just tendencies for wildly incorrect comparisons (past Arm cores vs upcoming competition cores, scale-targeted configurations vs workstation-targeted ones, etc.)
Traditionally they have certainly been. It was a huge embarrassment that the small PA Semi start up could design their PA6T core in a couple of years from scratch and introduce it at the same time as ARM's A9 (which was a venerable and relatively efficient but pretty poorly performing core considering they had big mobile, PC, and server ambitions).
Things might finally be turning around very recently just with their latest core, but it's difficult to know yet.
Would require an architectural license and lots of talent and time.
Getting stock Neoverse cores is an incredible deal for them, this is probably a big part of the reason they can offer cheaper services from their chips.
Arm cores aren't really all that behind, there are just tendencies for wildly incorrect comparisons (past Arm cores vs upcoming competition cores, scale-targeted configurations vs workstation-targeted ones, etc.)