Server Hardware Super-Cycle 2022, Software Developers Outlook

Intel is working their ass off to get back on track to their somewhat original roadmap. Lots of competition from AMD and more importantly ARM. We finally have node improvement after stuck with Intel 14nm on servers for 4+ years. TSMC 3nm in 2023 and 2nm by 2025. ( Expect a year later on Server ). DDR5 and DDR6 as well. 1 PB of SSD in 1U with Ruler form factor. And 800Gbps Network possible.

The biggest problem with all of these is that they are not getting cheaper per unit. DRAM / GB hasn't dropped at all in the past decade. The price floor is pretty much the same at $2/GB and much higher for high capacity and ECC memory. ( Price excluding inflation so you could argue it is cheaper ) NAND wont get much cheaper even with higher stacking. So all in all, you may be putting double the Storage, DRAM or Networking in a Server put they will cost double as well. Only thing that is getting slightly cheaper is CPU Cost per Core.

Edit: And that is why this decade may be all about Software optimisation. There are many inefficiency lying around in our software stacks. While we have peaks everywhere in our Hardware roadmap. I would be surprised if we could even get 1TB Memory and 128 Core Server at half of today's price by 2030.

Makes sense, though I was still surprised to read memset() potentially taking 5 seconds.