ARMing Data Centers


The server microprocessor market hovers around $15 billion/year. The market is largely dominated by Intel, although AMD is hoping to bite off 10% this year. 

In contrast, ARM historically focused on the mobile device and IoT markets, but now ARM is shouldering its way into the cloud computing market. Case in point is Amazon's Graviton2 custom processors that use 64-bit ARM cores. Eyes are on ARM due to its reputation for power-efficient cores with good performance. 

Ampere's Antra Chip


A new entry into the market this year, Ampere's Altra chip, may be a game-changer. The Altra features up to 80 single-threaded cores utilizing ARM v8 chips.  Ampere's Renee James, a former president of Intel, founded Ampere Computing in 2017 and is currently its Chairman and CEO. Ampere markets the Altra as 'the world's first cloud native processor'. Ampere's Mt. Jade rack dual-socket rack server includes fast DIMM  and NVMe solid-state drive support. The Altra is a chip to watch.

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