Re: I have no basis to agree or disagree with these estimates. Do you? Also, what about dual CPU workstations?
A total that included PC, mobile computers, and servers, would almost certainly include "workstations" as well.
But the quantity of dual and multiprocessor machines?
Here are some numbers for workstations last year:
google.com
Any high end PC can be called a "workstation". Generally, though, I think it's supposed to mean that the machine has one or more of the following characteristics:
Dual processor capable
High end graphics card
SCSI disk controller.
Much more expensive than a "desktop"
Dell claims some huge percentage (80%?) of the IBM compatible "workstation" market and they sold $1.5 Billion worth last year.
A "workstation" once cost at least 10K, but the Dell boxes probably average a third of that - call it .5 million units sold for $1.5 Billion. If 3/4 are bought with two processors, it adds .35 million CPUs to the 30 million market total. Add in the non Dell boxes and call it .5 million extra.
And here are some numbers for servers:
vnunet.com
Servers shipped are about a million, and judging by who shipped them, I'd estimate 85% are Intel or AMD CPU based (before Paul starts blithering, take a look at how many "other" boxes are in that total - I know I've personally put in a number of AMD based whitebox servers, I'm sure I'm not the only one).
If 800,000 "servers" are Intel based, how many are single CPU? There are a lot of reasons for putting in many small servers instead of one large server, but I'd start at half being single CPU.
So now we have .4 million "extra" CPUs sold. Some of those boxes are also multi CPU boxes with 4, 8, or more CPUs.
The number with 8 or more than 8 is probably less than 1,000 (but would still add, say 40,000 CPUs from these boxes. If 50K 4 way servers were sold, it would add 150K CPU unit sales.
So, it looks like a little more than 1 million additional CPUs sold to make some servers and workstations 2 or more CPU boxes.
The percentages I gave estimated as many as 2 million additional units, so I was probably way too generous.
Also, don't some CPUs get used in embedded devices
Both AMD and Intel count those differently and those sales and market share are not included in any of these counts.
Regards,
Dan |
