Silicon Valley Nation: ARM's expansion challenge

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- ARM this week sketched out a vision of moving methodically into servers and deeper into embedded, expanding its reach from a dominant position in mobile systems.

There's an architecture, a vision, a market need and an evolving ecosystem. A lot of great generals throughout history had similar ambitions but overreached and outran their supply lines. What's different today?

History is littered with powerful companies that dominated a market and pushed their technology into new areas, thinking their brand, technology or manufacturing would carry the day. Companies often overreach, mistakenly thinking applications will embrace the technology rather than the other way around. A decade ago, Intel was poised to crash the networking communications party. Didn't work. Different considerations, different sales cycle than the PC industry. More competition too. In addition to hubris, companies simply can lose focus or suffer from in-fighting and tech turf battles.

Landmines?

I'd wager that ARM's expansion into embedded and push into servers won't blow up in its face. Embedded design considerations aren't too far afield from mobile phones and tablets, and ARM already has a presence in many embedded systems.

Servers are a different animal altogether, but the reason ARM probably won't experience an Intel moment is structural. ARM is a step removed from the sturm und drang of a given market in that it defines a relevant architecture and lets partners run with the ball (and assume the risk).

It has no capital equipment skin in the game, and it studiously builds an infrastructure community (standards, software, peripherals) to raise the odds of success. Management and engineering seem conservative but not overly cautious.

For its drive into servers, it's enlisted a more-than-willing partner in AMD, already has success with Calxeda and is actively managing the design conversation through things, like HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation and TrustZone. This isn't to say Intel isn't great at seeding a market and building community; it is. But Intel's manufacturing exposure is what makes any expansion a higher-risk endeavor.