Looking For An Alternative To Intel? ARM Chips May Be That Answer

Remember how hard it was to get your hands on an ARM server? Well, those days may very well be behind us as five computer makers have announced servers with ARM processors. These new servers are direct competition to x86 systems in the mainstream market and are primarily designed for internet and cloud workloads. In addition to that, they also have the 48-core Cavium ThunderX chip, which is based on 64-bit ARM architecture.

The five companies making these servers are Gigabyte, Inventec, Wistron, Penguin Computing, and E4 Computer Engineering and these servers will be based on designs that are popular in x86 servers though they will have ARM processors. However, there is an even more interesting aspect to this and that is that some of the new servers will have the ability to use Nvidia's Tesla graphics processors, which adds extra processing power for graphics, engineering, and other computing applications that require high-performance.

All of the systems generally have one or two sockets and all of them have different strengths. Gigabyte's servers can be configured with up to 24 2.5" hard drives, which makes it perfect for web serving or storage. Penguin Computing's 19" Valkre system will be shipping in 2016 and is aimed at high-performance computing and has the ability to be configured with SSDs and different I/O technologies. Wistron's WV-S7224-10 and WV-A7424 are 2U and 4U storage servers. All of the servers, however, share power and cooling resources.

A majority of the companies announcing ARM servers are capable of making and supplying servers to buyers directly, which eliminates the middleman that is usually involved in the whole selling process. Companies like Wistron and Inventec are also capable of making an impact as server vendors in China whereas some of the other companies cannot. Pricing for the servers has yet to become available from any of the five companies though the servers themselves were announced at the Supercomputing 15 conference in Austin, Texas this past week.

ARM develops and licenses its processor architecture and is best known for its mobile chips found in most smartphones. A lot of people believe that the power efficiency that is derived from the mobile chips could very well translate to low-power ARM servers though as of now only a couple of systems have been made available. The most noteworthy system is the Moonshot from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

These new servers could be the motivation that ARM needs to make a serious push towards dominating the server market. Chip makers are having a very hard time generating profits with mobile and PC chips considering margins are thin for those systems. As a result, servers could be a very profitable alternative for vendors using ARM-architecture chips. AMD is planning on offering both x86-architecture and ARM-architecture chips as it continues to rebuild its server product line.

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ARM Enters the World of 64-bit with New ARMv8 Chip Architecture

ARM has just introduced its very first 64-bit microprocessor architecture, known as ARMv8. This new architecture should enable wider use of ARM chips in servers as well as other enterprise equipment and also increase the competition the company currently has with Intel.

ARMv8 adds 64-bit addressing capabilities, which is an improvement over the ARMv7-A architecture. The ARMv7-A architecture is capable of up to 40-bit addressing, though this new architecture puts ARM into more direct competition with Intel and its 65-bit Xeon processors.

The new architecture will take time to show up, though. ARM expects to release its first ARMv8 processor designs next year with prototype consumer and enterprise systems not expected to arrive until sometime in 2014 according to ARM. In a speech by ARM CTO Mike Muller at ARM TechCon on Thursday where the new design was announced, Muller stated, "This is the beginning of quite a long road to 64-bit products."

The ARMv8 processor architecture will offer backwards compatibility as well as migration for existing software, ARM added. Most of the PC and server operating systems in today's market ar 64-bit. 64-bit allows computers to address larger amounts of storage and memory, something that is especially useful for data-intensive applications.

ARM licenses processor architectures and designs to mobile chip companies, like Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, and the company's processors are also used in most smartphones and tablets on today's market. However, the company has practically no presence in the server and PC markets, both of which are dominated by Intel and its x86 processors.

The new ARM architecture will be implemented in chips that range from tiny sensors to large-scale infrastructure equipment, according to ARM, who also stated that it will bring "energy-efficient 64-bit computing" to high-end servers. Microsoft has said previously that 64-bit applications run faster than 32-bit applications, and ARM's new architecture could make future chips with ARM processors capable of running 64-bit Windows applications.

Microsoft's Windows 8 will work on ARM and x86 processors, and devices like tablets have been demonstrated running on ARM's 31-bit processors. The lack of 64-bit capabilities was considered a drawback in ARM's efforts to enter the PC and server markets with most applications running 64-bits. ARM had previously stated that it would address 64-bit only when necessary, pointing out that it would not sacrifice power consumption in order to bring more performance. It looks like that time has come.

Source: Computer World - ARM goes 64-bit with new ARMv8 chip architecture

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