News & Analysis
The servers are coming, says ARM's CEO
Peter Clarke
4/28/2010 11:44 AM EDT
There has been speculation that this was the case with reports surfacing about Google's acquisition of Agnilux, a company thought to be developing power-efficient processors whose founders have ARM architecture experience. A second pointer came in the form of a job advertisement posted by Microsoft.
ARM has built up its IP licensing business with a series of processor cores designed principally for client-side computing, but ARM's CEO said the architecture as it stands is also suitable for server applications.
"The architecture can support server application as it is. The implementations [of ARM] have traditionally been aimed at relatively low performance optimized for minimum power consumption. But we are seeing higher speed, multicore implementations now pushing up to 2-GHz. The main difference for a server processor is the addition of high-speed communications interfaces."
East was speaking to EE Times to discuss ARM's first quarter financial results.
ARM's opportunity to attack the server market, with potentially negative impact for rival Intel, has opened up due to the extreme amounts of energy consumed in server farms. The extreme cost of powering data centers has led to top-down calculations of the best architectures for computation-per-watt.
East said some companies have gone beyond such back-of-the-envelope calculations. "We are seeing people experimenting with multiple ARM cores on a chip. They have the option to use our A9 at 2-GHz, and four cores. So people can do server experiments with the existing technology at the high-end of the road-map."
East declined to name which customers or partners are working ARM processor designs for servers, but added: "I'd expect to see something out there within 12 months."
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rtrauben
4/28/2010 7:39 PM EDT
until arm expands their virtual address width beyond 32-bits, they will have a significant roadblock for adoption in
the server space.
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peter.clarke
5/1/2010 6:12 AM EDT
Good point.
Warren East did say there that servers could be supported as is, but that does not prevent ARM from developing additional cores to better serve the server domain and clearly 64-bit addressing would be a key care-about.
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t.alex
5/3/2010 12:17 PM EDT
I believe the main reason for ARM is its low power consumption. Nevertheless, there are few questions that pop into my mind when it comes to servers: what operating systems (unix, linux, windows...) would the best ? and of course the whole lot of software stuff that need to be ported as well?
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edwardk2
5/12/2010 5:10 PM EDT
ARM cores in servers? Gimmie a break! ARM cores don't even run laptops or desktops at the moment. This is pure fantasy.
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alxx
5/12/2010 10:02 PM EDT
Software already exists netbsd, arm linux (debian), freebsd , ubuntu desktop on arm , plus openembedded/angstrom (runs on TI omap3/4 (beagle board and gumstix) and a lot of other chips) and few other distros.
http://www.netbsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/arm.html
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/arm
http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/
Arm already runs desktops , embedded servers , device servers , indistrial control systems and lots of other systems and has been for years , go look up ionix - arm desktops have been around for at least a decade if you know where to look.
Tell google its fantasy.
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SunnyGuy
5/13/2010 12:51 PM EDT
It appears there is an ARM port for OpenSolaris, as well. ...
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+osarm/WebHome
Sunny Guy
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SunnyGuy
5/13/2010 1:00 PM EDT
>> ARM cores in servers? Gimmie a break! ARM cores don't even run laptops or desktops at the moment. ...
More like ARM cores don't run x86/x64 servers. Yes, and Ford drivers don't drive non-Ford cars currently either.
Even Windows used to run on multiple architectures, such as Mips, PowerPC, and Alpha. Nowadays it's limited to x86/x64, is it not. That a reflection on Microsoft, rather than on the various chip architectures. I think putting all their eggs in the x86/x64 basket, and going the bloatware route, was a shortlived tactic -- akin to buying an SUV nowadays.
Sunny Guy
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