I won't be so certain. An ASIC/FPGA chip that accelerates specific Database operation is already a reality. The problem is the cost effect ratio.
BTW, cloud provider already making tons of customized hardware themselves. And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure.
>And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure.
Well, I am saying that they do obviously spend an ennormous effort trying to do so. To better formulate what I said, the fact that they did acquire some hardware/semi expertise in house, does not mean that this expertise drives them as a company.
If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fromwebdev, will knock at the door of CEO with "I found a way to do things A and B 250 times better, but you have to scrap half of your business plan," a webdev will be heard, and semi guys not.
Btw, the chip Amazon showed, was from a company they acquired solely for that - to not to pay an arm and a leg for high end switching chips.
And about OEM servers - it is surprising that big dotcoms are late comers to the party, and were relying on off the shelf brand hardware to the very last moment.
Big hosting providers from outside of dotcom ecosystems were relying on direct OEM orders and custom built DCs for more than a decade. I do remember selling Atom based single board computers stuffed into U1s and Intel core 2 duo systems with soldered on memory and cpus to budget web hosting guys back when I worked as a trainee in a trade company back in 2007-2009.
> "If tomorrow 2 engineers, one from semi side, and one fromwebdev, will knock at the door of CEO with "I found a way to do things A and B 250 times better, but you have to scrap half of your business plan," a webdev will be heard, and semi guys not."
What are you basing this assumption on? Have you worked for one of these companies? Do you know anyone that does?
Also, regarding Microsoft, any suggestion that they're focused on acquiring web devs is clearly short sighted. If you want a better idea of its priorities, I'd suggest taking a look at which sectors it earns its main revenue in, as well as taking a look at the work being done at Microsoft Research.
It takes a giant effort for ordinary managerial cadres to wrap their mind around of what a web company is and learn the whole model of behavior expected from them. The few who manage to learn some basic technical disciplines and go up in ranks tend to overestimate the importance of their experience.
You meet such people a lot in a dotcom setting. It takes great effort to persuade such person to bother to put efforts to understand yet another mentally voluminous subject that will break his idea of "cool" yet another time.
It is like trying to persuade a prideful child who just learned how to drive a tricycle to learn to drive a normal bike...
No, I don't work for Microsoft. However, I have enough experience with their ecosystem to suggest that their revenue focus is not in web dev. Other products (such as Windows, Office, Azure and Xbox) are their prime source of revenue. Whilst I don't doubt they have plenty of web devs (TypeScript and VS Code both spring to mind as web-based tech from Microsoft), I wouldn't say that is their core competency, so...
> "a company whose topmost technical expertise is underhanded web programming"
... doesn't ring true. However, if you know people on the inside I'd be interested in knowing how the size of the web dev teams compares to other teams, such as the Xbox division.
BTW, cloud provider already making tons of customized hardware themselves. And talking like Amazon/Google/Microsoft only have talents for web programming is short sighted and simply not sure.
https://datacenterfrontier.com/amazon-building-custom-asic-c...