14 DAY TRIAL // ARM has long been trying to stretch beyond the mobile phone and handset market, but it seems like its efforts to make an incursion on the server segment will have to be big, as Dell found some issues with the software.
Consumers keeping track of such things might be aware of the fact that ARM and Intel have long been vying for each other's market segment.
Intel has been tightly holding onto the PC and industrial computing markets, where it only faces competition from Advanced Micro Devices, though both use the same x86 chip architecture.
Meanwhile, ARM practically owns the mobile phone and other small form factor electronic markets, as its chips have very low power consumption compared to the ones of the above mentioned sort.
Nevertheless, recently, ARM chips have been getting bigger frequencies, enough so that the tablet market ended up mostly under their influence instead of x86 CPUs.
Still, while players on the nascent industry figure out exactly which was to go, ARM has been trying to secure some of the server front as well.
On that note, it is reported that Dell is experimenting with servers powered by this technology. The findings appear to be less than flattering.
Power and density in data centers are definitely two very interesting advantages of ARM over x86 in data centers.
Unfortunately, the platform has software issues that might just prevent it from becoming suitable in this field of IT.
To be more specific, while it may be worthwhile to port application code from x86 over to the new instruction set, there are cost and time issues that will interfere.
As such, while the world-class PC and enterprise computing device maker does aim to unleash ARM-based servers over the next 12 to 18 months, the fact remains that much work on the software side of the equation is needed.