The company goes after the server and HPC markets

Oct 28, 2011 10:11 GMT  ·  By

ARM has recently disclosed new information about its next-generation processor architecture and announced that this will bring support for the 64-bit instruction set enabling the company to make its entrance into new segments of the consumer and enterprise markets.

The new chip architecture will be called ARM v8 and will consist of two main execution states, AArch64 and Aarch32, the former enabling its chips to run 64-bit instructions.

This approach also enables the ARM v8 architecture to fully support software developed for 32-bit ARM v7a processors.

The move to 64-bit should enable ARM to bring the advantages of energy-efficient 64-bit computing to new applications such as high-end servers and computing.

“With our increasingly connected world, the market for 32-bit processing continues to expand and evolve creating new opportunities for 32-bit ARMv7 based processors in embedded, real-time and open application platforms.” said Mike Muller, CTO, ARM.

“We believe the ARMv8 architecture is ideally suited to enable the ARM partnership to continue to grow in 32-bit application spaces and bring diverse, innovative and energy-efficient solutions to 64-bit processing markets,” concluded the company's CEO.

Despite this announcement being made today, the move to 64-bit will take a while as the first processors based on the new ARM v8 architecture aren't expected to arrive until 2012, with actual server prototypes running on the new architecture expected in 2014, according to EE Times.

Nvidia, one of ARM's most important partners, already announced its plans to introduce support for the 64-bit instruction set in its Project Denver processor that targets both desktop computers and HPC systems.

Other ARM partners are also interested in this architecture, although going into a market dominated by players such as AMD, IBM, Intel and Oracle will definitely come as a challenge.

The new v8 architecture could also arrive as a great help for the recently formed European consortium we reported about just yesterday that wants to build an energy-efficient exascale supercomputer called Mont-Blanc based on ARM's processors.