Adobe Considers Manufacturing Custom Processors
Adobe certainly isn't the first company to consider making--or actually make--its own chips. Axios noted that Apple, Google, Samsung, and Amazon already do just that. (And speculation runs rampant among the Apple community about if or when the company will decide to ditch Intel for good.)
Those companies don't make their own chips for the fun of it. They do it because it gives them more control over their products, rather than forcing them to make their software for standard hardware. The idea is that this leads to better performance while also reducing dependence on outside companies. Imagine that right now every product is like a flavor dust applied to a Lay's chip. Eventually, someone was going to make their own spuds from scratch.
From that perspective, Adobe making its own chips would make sense. Its software is an ecosystem unto itself—there are people out there whose livelihoods are directly affected by their proficiency with and performance in Adobe's creative tools. (Sorry, sorry, the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription service. Branding!) Improving performance with custom silicon would help those people and, of course, give Adobe yet another way to make itself all-but-indispensable to creators.
[...] Axios quoted Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis as saying: "Do we need to become an ARM licensee? I don't have the answer, but it is something we are going to have to pay attention to."
Also at Axios.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @04:41PM (5 children)
Nobody is going to start plugging in another accelerator card for graphics work when we already have GPUs which can do all of this real time. Zero chance that's the motivation for this. It's got to be for their Creative Cloud.
Speaking of which, do not subscribe to any Adobe products in the Creative Cloud. Use GIMP for raster work instead of Photoshop, Inkscape for vector work instead of Illustrator, and Darktable instead of Lightroom.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday February 07 2019, @05:26PM (4 children)
Can you say "dongle"?
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I before E except after C
disproved by science
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @08:14PM
No because saying it can get you in trouble now days...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards [knowyourmeme.com]
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Friday February 08 2019, @01:53AM (2 children)
How do you plug a dongle into the cloud?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday February 08 2019, @08:21AM (1 child)
What I meant was, if they make special processing chips that are required to run, for instance, Photoshop, then Photoshop might only run with said chips plugged in — thus tying the software to a hardware dongle.
The cloud is the extra bonus feature for them in that it means that they can constantly dip into people's pockets. A dongle offers a tangible way to tie the software to the sale. If they can sell it as "here's the AI engine" (or whatever), so much the better. Because dongles just for the sake of dongles haven't gone over well, historically speaking.
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Perfect has seven letters. So does Foooood.
Coincidence? I think not.
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Friday February 08 2019, @08:56AM
What I meant was "we went through the dongle phase previously and it sucked, now how will they try to inflict it upon their customers again"
I'll see about wrapping it in sarc tags next time :)