[Beowulf] Register article on Epyc (Brian Dobbins)

[Greg Lindahl]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 12:27:30PM -0700, mathog wrote:

> Recall that when the Opterons first came out the major manufacturers
> did not ship any systems with it for what, a year, maybe longer?  I
> vaguely recall SuperMicro going in quickly and Dell, HP, and IBM
> whistling in a corner.  Something about contractual obligations to
> Intel, or a desire not to piss off Intel.

Uh, it's more complicated than that. There's a ton of proprietary info
related to shipping a motherboard and BIOS with a given chip, and iirc
Intel insisted that anyone who worked with their proprietary info not
have access to any AMD proprietary info. Once you add that to the fact
that many of the big companies didn't want to bother with high-end AMD
servers until they were a proven success, and you get a year-long
delay.

I don't think it hurt AMD that much in the end.

-- greg