A recent post by Stephen Foskett has revisted a blog discussion that Chuck Hollis and I had on commodity vs. special purpose hardware. It’s clear to me that commodity hardware is a losing proposition for the storage industry and for storage users as a whole. Not sure why everybody else disagrees with me about this.
It’s all about delivering value to the end user. If one can deliver equivalent value with commodity hardware than possible with special purpose hardware then obviously commodity hardware wins – no question about it.
But, and it’s a big BUT, when some company invests in special purpose hardware, they have an opportunity to deliver better value to their customers. Yes it’s going to be more expensive on a per unit basis but that doesn’t mean it can’t deliver commensurate benefits to offset that cost disadvantage.
Look around, one sees special purpose hardware everywhere. For example, just checkout Apple’s iPad, iPhone, and iPod just to name a few. None of these would be possible without special, non-commodity hardware. Yes, if one disassembles these products, you may find some commodity chips, but I venture, the majority of the componentry is special purpose, one-off designs that aren’t readily purchase-able from any chip vendor. And the benefits it brings, aside from the coolness factor, is significant miniaturization with advanced functionality. The popularity of these products proves my point entirely – value sells and special purpose hardware adds significant value.
One may argue that the storage industry doesn’t need such radical miniaturization. I disagree of course, but even so, there are other more pressing concerns worthy of hardware specialization, such as reduced power and cooling, increased data density and higher IO performance, to name just a few. Can some of this be delivered with SBB and other mass-produced hardware designs, perhaps. But I believe that with judicious selection of special purposed hardware, the storage value delivered along these dimensions can be 10 times more than what can be done with commodity hardware.
Special purpose HW cost and development disadvantages denied
The other advantage to commodity hardware is the belief that it’s just easier to develop and deliver functionality in software than hardware. (I disagree, software functionality can be much harder to deliver than hardware functionality, maybe a subject for a different post). But hardware development is becoming more software like every day. Most hardware engineers do as much coding as any software engineer I know and then some.
Then there’s the cost of special purpose hardware but ASIC manufacturing is getting more commodity like every day. Several hardware design shops exist that sell off the shelf processor and other logic one can readily incorporate into an ASIC and Fabs can be found that will manufacture any ASIC design at a moderate price with reasonable volumes. And, if one doesn’t need the cost advantage of ASICs, use FPGAs and CPLDs to develop special purpose hardware with programmable logic. This will cut engineering and development lead-times considerably but will cost commensurably more than ASICs.
Do we ever stop innovating?
Probably the hardest argument to counteract is that over time, commodity hardware becomes more proficient at providing the same value as special purpose hardware. Although this may be true, products don’t have to stand still. One can continue to innovate and always increase the market delivered value for any product.
If there comes a time when further product innovation is not valued by the market than and only then, does commodity hardware win. However, chairs, cars, and buildings have all been around for many years, decades, even centuries now and innovation continues to deliver added value. I can’t see where the data storage business will be any different a century or two from now…
