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ARM predicts wave of servers for 2015

Servers based on ARM processors are unlikely to ship in volume until 2015, according to the president of the chip design company."We firmly believe this is going to happen.
Written by Jack Clark, Contributor

Servers based on ARM processors are unlikely to ship in volume until 2015, according to the president of the chip design company.

"We firmly believe this is going to happen. We know it is starting to happen right now. But it's going to be several years," Tudor Brown said at the Computex conference in Taipei. "We think it's going to be 2014 or 2015, realistically, before you see any volume from ARM," he said, according to a report on Monday in PC World.

ARM's chips typically demonstrate a lower thermal design power (TDP) than those made by rivals AMD and Intel, increasing their competitiveness in the power-conscious server market. The TDP measure describes the amount of power a cooling system can effectively dissipate as heat, so a lower TDP means the chip uses power more efficiently.

The Cambridge-based chip designer has experimented with ARM servers itself. In November Marvell announced a quad-core ARM-based processor designed for enterprise-level servers.

Intel, though, is pushing against ARM by committing itself to aggressive development of its low-powered Atom range of chips. The Santa Clara-based company has announced plans to lower the average TDP of its mainstream chips from around 35 to 40W down to 15W. It expects to bring out a sub-10W Atom server in 2012 as well.

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