The people involved or wanting to use this buy so many chips from intel that if intel doesn't get on board, it's going to likely turn out badly for intel.
I note that Facebook and Intel are missing, which makes me wonder if they are off in a corner somewhere doing their own thing.
"especially when you need to make sure that 30+ year-old code still work like it's the case in HPC"
Most code that works on Intel works on AMD. It's rare that it doesn't. The HPC vendor will have low risk on migration + get a bunch of competing accelerators at various price points for their problem. This is quite an incentive to move even if there would be stragglers.
The question is : are the DOD/DOE (or the chinese/european equivalent) going to risk millions for their next supercomputers on a new architecture or prefer good old intel ?
Especially when we know that the jump to exascale computation will only be possible if we get rid of the buses and have everything on the same chip (which is one direction taken by Intel).
My point is that the conclusion of the article "Intel has to come up with an answer..." is just plain wrong. This new architecture is an answer to intel new developments. We will have to wait to see what stick to the wall.
They're the people that bought all the POWER's (SP2 onward), Alphas, Itaniums (eg SGI), Cell's, and so on. They'll take risks esp if they think the firm will be around to supply the upgrades.
Err, again, the people involved, on their own, buy enough chips to have a completely self supporting ecosystem.
Even if it only ever stayed the current set of participants, it'd be enough money to be worth it
Plus the suppliers are already making enough to justify building these things. It's existing products being extended with a new interface to support new products. Whatever Intel does probably won't kill the existing products. With that in mind, I think the move can be only beneficial for Intel's competitors given they're already in an uphill battle needing differentiators. What you think on that angle?
I note that Facebook and Intel are missing, which makes me wonder if they are off in a corner somewhere doing their own thing.