Intel on ARM servers: Wimpy cores niche at best

An Intel executive weighed in on the recent chatter about ARM and Atom low-powered processors taking over the server game. The upshot: Low powered processors have a role, but aren't going to make much of a dent in the server market.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley technology and telecommunications conference, Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel's data center unit, talked about ARM in servers as well as Atom. Skaugen also talked about the prospects for Atom-powered servers via the likes of SeaMicro, a startup that has been garnering a lot of press of late.

Here's what Skaugen had to say to counter ARM Holdings CEO, who recently had a much more optimistic take about his company's intellectual property prospects in servers: "We've been out talking about Atom and servers for several years to our customers under NDA. And candidly, there hasn't been a lot of interest in that architecture in a broad sense. I could see if you go out four to five years maybe 10 percent of the total market, give or take a couple percent, could be interested in such an architecture...if Atom is the best micro architecture we'll embrace it. And so we're constantly in the labs going out and asking about these workloads."

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