Google set to make its own energy efficient ARM Server chip
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Typically Intel chips waste 90% of the power that goes into a data center as heat. And Google is fed up and wants an alternative for the millions of servers that it has. What better than purchase an ARM license and build your own ARM server chips? :) It will be possible to expand the data centers to tens of millions of servers and still clock in with less wasted energy.
The biggest speed restriction is the DDR cycle time that limits CPU to about 10MHz operating speed. No matter whose chips are used. So may as well go for the more energy efficient ARM chips.
Google could use this opportunity to break into the hardware business to power its tablets and netbooks by making the chip with one single header file that names every register and every bit field and then selling the chip and the header file to the Linux and open source community. Every single open sourced project is likely to switch to using the Google ARM chip within days. If google then brought out a second chip, it would take hours to days to change that one single header file and get all the previous work up and running on the new ARM chip again.
If google played their cards right, they will own the entire ARM server market, tablet market, and Linux ARM chip based market. With that power, they can squeeze out the patent trolls like appile and microshaft by denying them any further markets because it will all be taken up by cheap Linux gadgets and open source projects that complete for attention at every niche at every level of competition.
In fact any open source project can make their own SoC with single header file and storm the entire market. It does not have to be google. It could be Ubuntu, or Mint, or one of the numerous other distro makers. All they need is about USD 2 million in the bank, with a bit crown funding perhaps, and never have to look back after taking their first orders.