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Comment by python-guy-vt | Hacker News Reader

I think even more are holding out for Epyc.

Is Epyc really going to make any big impact on the global server market? Call me old-fashioned, but I just can't imagine enterprises moving to Epyc any time soon. Intel has built a really powerful brand with Xeon over the years.

People who buy a lot of servers look more carefully into their purchases than consumers. Brand reputation does matter, but if you can save 10% by switching to another quality brand, it's a no brainer. Of course you'll want to do a evaluation run for a few months.

There are going to be small shops for which the familiarity of Xeon will be enough to keep them in the same pattern. If 10% of your costs are just a few weeks or months of engineer time, and you only have an engineer or two to spare, it's a big risk and expense to figure out the different costs and to do that evaluation run. There are a lot of shops like that.

There are not as many huge enterprises, but they are a huge amount of the market in terms of volume, and at those scales a 1% savings is worth years of engineering expenses, and you can bet that they will be doing the studies and choosing the most cost-effective option regardless of previous decisions.

What percentage do Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, OVH, Tencent Cloud, AliCloud combined for Intel's DC Market? My guess is that they are over 50%.

And most of these Skylake order were placed well in advance, when they / the market didnt even have time to evaluate EPYC.

I do think they will move to EPYC in some form, just to keep Intel's price in check. After all EPYC offers much more value.

"HPE straps AMD chip into 2P/2U server box with Epyc results" - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/21/hpe_brings_amds_epy...

"Microsoft Announces Azure VMs with Dual 32-core AMD EPYC CPUs" - https://www.anandtech.com/show/12116/amd-and-microsoft-annou...

Wouldn't be surprised to see an equivalent AWS announcement soon, either.

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