Junko Yoshida, EETimes, Oct. 17, 2017 –
MADISON, Wis. - The cloud service is changing practically everyone's business.
Often, it forces hardware vendors' hands, and nudges them to offer their products - at drastically reduced rates - "as a service," rather than selling customers the hardware as a tangible product.
Car-as-a-service ("CaaS") is one example. The concept of "miles used per vehicle" fundamentally alters carmakers' "unit-based sales" model. It represents both a threat and an opportunity that the automotive industry can no longer afford to ignore.
The chip business could be next. "FPGA as a service" is emerging as a cloud application in data centers. If it starts to take off, how will FPGA vendors like Intel or Xilinx respond?