Qualcomm Is Plotting a Return To Server Market With New Chip (bloomberg.com) 13
Qualcomm is taking another run at the market for server processors, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with its plans, betting it can tap a fast-growing industry and decrease its reliance on smartphones. From a report: The company is seeking customers for a product stemming from last year's purchase of chip startup Nuvia, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Amazon.com AWS business, one of the biggest server chip buyers, has agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings, they said. Chief Executive Officer Cristiano Amon is trying to turn Qualcomm into a broader provider of semiconductors, rather than just the top maker of smartphone chips. But an earlier push into the server market was abandoned four years ago under his predecessor. At the time, the company was trying to cut costs and placate investors after fending off a hostile takeover by Broadcom.
This time around, Qualcomm has Nuvia, staffed with chip designers from companies such as Apple. Amon, who acquired the business for about $1.4 billion in 2021, has said that its work will help revitalize Qualcomm's high-end offerings for smartphones. But Nuvia was founded as a provider of technology for the server industry. The market for cloud computing infrastructure -- the kind of equipment that Amazon, Google and Microsoft use to whisk data around the world -- generated $73.9 billion last year, according to research firm IDC. That was up 8.8% from 2020. The owners of giant cloud data centers have long relied on Intel's chip technology for their servers. But they're increasingly embracing processors that use designs from Arm, a key partner in phone chips for San Diego-based Qualcomm.
This time around, Qualcomm has Nuvia, staffed with chip designers from companies such as Apple. Amon, who acquired the business for about $1.4 billion in 2021, has said that its work will help revitalize Qualcomm's high-end offerings for smartphones. But Nuvia was founded as a provider of technology for the server industry. The market for cloud computing infrastructure -- the kind of equipment that Amazon, Google and Microsoft use to whisk data around the world -- generated $73.9 billion last year, according to research firm IDC. That was up 8.8% from 2020. The owners of giant cloud data centers have long relied on Intel's chip technology for their servers. But they're increasingly embracing processors that use designs from Arm, a key partner in phone chips for San Diego-based Qualcomm.
The future is ARM (Score:2)
The future of the server market is likely looking to be ARM but it seems like it is still a very long way off.
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Things that make moving from x86_64 to ARM easy, will likely also make moving from ARM to RiscV easy. The only question is when, and if, RiscV will offer price/performance competitive with ARM. Even then, if RiscV doesn't provide a compelling reason to switch, many will be happy to stick with ARM.
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The future of the server market is likely looking to be ARM
Have to admit, I've never really understood why Adjustable Rate Mortgages are so popular with the IT community.
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It depends what the server is used for.
If it's for raw computation, it'll stay x64 because it's got the performance.
If it's for other things, then maybe. If the server is serving up webpages, for example, ARM is perfectly adequate for the task. In fact, one advantage might be those VPS providers - why virtualize a big x64 server into many virtual machines, when you can devote an ARM server to a cust
Won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
What I've learned about Qualcomm, it's that they are both NDA freaks (more so than Intel), SoC crazy (couldn't make a plain CPU to save their lives), love design churn (because who needs standard addresses or open specs). What does this mean? They aren't going to be open enough about the design to enable developers to actually control the damn thing must less liberal enough to entice more than a few motherboard makers. Ultimately, it's going to be pricey to get one of their boards and it will likely need binary drivers to be manually installed.
I foresee Qualcomm failing once again... for all the same reasons.
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Servers are not mobile phones. The software distribution model is vastly different.
Tell that to Qualcomm because that's exactly how they fucked it up last time.
Qualcomm will likely adhere to standards and have open source drivers in the Linux kernel
No, they should but history thus far has shown they will not.
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it will likely need binary drivers to be manually installed.
This alone should cause them to fail. No cloud service provider wants to be stuck on an old kernel just because they bought some Qualcomm crap. This might fly in Android land, but on hardware with hard uptime requirements and real consequences for breaking them, the lack of updates often associated with Qualcomm crap is a no-go.
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Yeah except middle managers only care about initial cost (which is how we all got saddled with UNIX in the first place)
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I think you meant to respond to a different post.