AMD’s Xilinx-enhanced Epycs are right up the alley of datacenter builders

AMD’s plans to integrate AI functionality from its Xilinx FPGAs with its Epyc server microprocessors presents several tantalizing opportunities for systems builders and datacenter operators alike, Glenn O’Donnell, research director at Forrester, told The Register. A former semiconductor engineer, O’Donnell leads Forrester’s …

[lundril]

Another company murdered

First Intel acquired Altera... and killed it, because the only purpose Intel sees in FPGAs is ML/AI.

And now it seems AMD is doing the same with Xilinx.

Doesn't anyone in these companies understand that FPGAs are crucial for all hardware which is not a mass product (< 100000 pieces per year)?

At least right now there still is Lattice Semi and Microchip... but these play in a different league compared to Xilinx and Intel (the part formerly known as Altera)

[Alan Brown]

Re: Another company murdered

In short - nope

Companies are just as susceptable to "target fixation" as the humans in control of them are

It was target fixation on the 6800 which resulted in Motorola losing a bunch of engineers who left to form MOS(6502s) - which almost ceased to be a CPU maker thanks to Jack Trammail's fixation on pocket calculators to the exclusion of everything else (The TRS-80 came about because Trammail had a virtually done deal with Radio Shack based on the 6502 and then relentlessly insisted on bundling Commodore pocket calculators with the computer rollout. Radio Shack baulked and went elsewhere, the rest is history)

Intel's fixation on being a "general chipmaker/memory maker" caused it to to lose its three top CPU guys to form Zilog (incidentally the main reason the IBM PC didn't have a Zilog Z8000 CPU in it instead of the much inferior 8086 was because Zilog was owned by Exxon and at the time Exxon was IBM's mortal enemy)

This area of the market tends to be driven by visionaries who can understand where things are headed, vs MBAs or "smart businessmen" who simply want to milk the existing market for everything they can

[CapeCarl]

Re: Another company murdered

I wonder how this will effect HFT (High Frequency Trading) firm's Xilinx-based "tick to trade" systems?