According to Reuters Beijing January 10 reported that the recent discovery of security vulnerabilities affecting most of Intel's chip, Some Intel data center customers are considering using their rival's chips to build a new infrastructure. These data center customers use thousands of computers running cloud service networks.
Whether there is a large number of customers switch to embrace, or Intel was forced to offer, Intel's rapidly growing data center business may be under attack.Market research firm IDC released a report, Intel chips support 98% of the data center operations.
Last week, security researchers exposed chip exploits called Meltdown and Specter that could allow hackers to steal passwords on many types of computers, cell phones and cloud-based servers Or encryption key.
Intel said in a statement on Tuesday that it will help customers find the best solution for security, performance and compatibility. "For many customers, performance metrics are paramount. We are focused on doing what we can Make sure we meet their expectations, "Intel said.
Alternatives to cloud computing include the use of AMD chips or ARM-based chips and graphics processors (GPUs), which use the same x86 architecture as Intel chips.
Cloud service providers said it would be too complicated to switch previously installed Intel chips to their rival chips, but in the future they may use other alternative chips to expand the service network.Because AMD and Intel chips use the same x86 architecture, Intel chip replaced by AMD chip is the easiest to achieve.
ARM-based chips are not as fast as Intel's x86 chips when it comes to tasks like search, and the software has to be rewritten.
NVIDIA's GPUs can not directly replace Intel chips, but they can act as CPUs on new tasks like image recognition and speech recognition.
Even before the security breach was exposed, major technology companies had been experimenting with chips that replaced Intel processors, and in March last year Microsoft began using ARM-based chips in Azure cloud services. In December last year, Microsoft Azure deployed AMD In 2016. Google said it is designing a server based on the IBM Power9 processor in 2016. Amazon AWS Cloud Services selected AMD's GPU for a graphics design service announced in September last year.
