AWS Adds ARM Instances to EC2
I was surprised to read that at it's yearly conference, Amazon announced that you can now spin up EC2 instances based on their custom ARM CPU. This isn't a complete surprise - face it, Apple is close to launching ARM-based laptops and desktops. It's been batted about in the press for a while, and based on the old quad-fat binaries, the technology is there, and Apple certainly has all the experience to get macOS up and running on ARM.
This isn't necessarily the cheapest EC2 instances - for the a1.medium, a 1 CPU, 2 GiB RAM instance, is $0.0255/hr which rolls up to $233.38/yr for the instance. And the t3.nano starts at $0.0052/hr, but what's most interesting is that AWS did the math, and decided that building their own CPU - and then, of course, their own machines, was the cost-effective way to go. Amazing.
I have to believe that Intel is missing out - or maybe they will be tied to the x86 chipset and ride that for all it's worth. Who knows... but it seems like something they are missing out on. And how long can it be before we see laptops and desktops based on ARM? Not long.