14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices has made a partnership with ARM, but instead of taking NVIDIA's route and trying their hand at the mobile industry, they are looking at a different market segment.
And that segment is the market for servers, or rather server central processing units (CPUs) and computer modules.
Right now, 99% of all servers used worldwide use x86 CPUs as the base. These CPUs are the standard type, found in all PCs, mobile or desktop.
ARM has been working for years on server solutions though, and we dare say it managed to get farther in those efforts than Intel did in its quest for a promising mobile x86 SoC.
In fact, ARM did well enough that Advanced Micro Devices considered its architecture a viable alternative in servers and data centers.
Sure, x86 processors still dominate in terms of raw performance, but the energy efficiency of ARM chips remains unrivaled.
And since energy efficiency is so essential these days, AMD and ARM may experience great success now that they are getting serious.
The wider array of choices their partnership is providing server builders will work in their favor as well. Digitimes says so anyway.
Of course, none of this would have been possible if ARM hadn't already have an architecture capable of 64-bit instructions.
AMD will leverage all it can from that. All its x86 chips have 64-bit support now, so it can devote lots of resources and manpower to perfecting it on ARM next.
The ARM platform for servers is called Warsaw and will be used in next-generation 2P/4P server solutions, good for xSQL or traditional database computing, and enterprise high-virtualization workloads in general.
Servers with smaller sizes and further reductions in power needs are next on the roadmap. We may even see heterogeneous architectures, since GPUs (like in APU designs) are good at parallel computing (number crunching).