ARM Server traction

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After many false starts it seems like ARM servers are getting some real traction, I was looking at some market share figures the other day and was shocked that ARM now has 10% of the server market, and projected for 20% by 2025. This is up from essentially 0% 2 years ago. I was really skeptical about this but after some digging, apparently 20% of all running AWS instances are already Graviton. It starts to make sense as many cloud workloads are essentially becoming appliances, and Amazon has spent significantly in optimizing workloads for it's own processors, and delivering something like a 50% cost advantage in doing so. Microsoft is doing similar things, but leveraging Ampere, and Google just announced they are also going to roll their own. Following cloud engineers on other forum, it's clear that there is a real shift in thinking happening right now around deploying on ARM instances because of cost and there is a big push right now at startups and big companies to reduce cloud bills.

We've been talking about this trend here on SemiWiki for several years so I think we all knew this was coming, but I'm still shocked at how quickly the change is happening.

This has to have Intel worried, with AMD being estimated to take 30% share and ARM expected to take 20% share, we are seeing Intel datacenter share dropping from nearly 100% to potentially less than 50% in a span of just a few years.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Arm servers were many years in the making but yes it is happening. The Softbank acquisition may have delayed it but I also knew it would happen at some point in time. I would credit the Hyperscalers. They threw billions of dollars at it and made it happen, absolutely.

Intel, AMD, QCOM, and the other chip only makers should be on notice. Systems companies are making some excellent chips for their products so who needs the sloppy supply chain from off-the-shelf chips and so called "golden screws". Viva La Bespoke Silicon!!!!

Bespoke Silicon is Coming, Absolutely! - Semiwiki

It was nice to be at a live conference again. DesignCon was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, my favorite location, which to me there was a back to normal crowd. The sessions I attended were full and the show floor was busy. Masks and vaccinations were not required, maybe that was it. Or…

semiwiki.com

 

[ta152h]

Arm servers were many years in the making but yes it is happening. The Softbank acquisition may have delayed it but I also knew it would happen at some point in time. I would credit the Hyperscalers. They threw billions of dollars at it and made it happen, absolutely.

Intel, AMD, QCOM, and the other chip only makers should be on notice. Systems companies are making some excellent chips for their products so who needs the sloppy supply chain from off-the-shelf chips and so called "golden screws". Viva La Bespoke Silicon!!!!

Bespoke Silicon is Coming, Absolutely! - Semiwiki

It was nice to be at a live conference again. DesignCon was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, my favorite location, which to me there was a back to normal crowd. The sessions I attended were full and the show floor was busy. Masks and vaccinations were not required, maybe that was it. Or…

semiwiki.com

Intel has noticed, thus Sierra Forest, which is a more direct competitor to ARM processors than anything they have or AMD has.

TSMC should take notice too. Intel is working to make customizable processors in their fabs for certain customers, and that uses IP building blocks they have. They can win or lose here. AMD, I thought foolishly, quietly cancelled the K12, so as far as I know they no longer have an ARM processor in the works, or a competitor like Sierra Forest.

And then there's RISC-V in the wings. The Cloud makes it much easier for a new instruction set to compete, since the cloud provider largely assumes the risk/support that would otherwise be daunting to most enterprises. And since it comes without any licensing fee, it could easily be a contender in the future, just as ARM is now.

There's a lot to it. There's nothing preventing AMD or Intel from making ARM or RISC-V processors if they choose. And Intel can benefit a lot from their logic IP and fabs to offer customization that is attractive to companies that want to build their own processors like Amazon. It could play out in a lot of different ways.

 

[Tanj]

I'm still shocked at how quickly the change is happening.

It takes years of preparation to be an overnight success. ARM started v8 at least 15 years ago, and put good people on it.