Does the ARM server have a cost advantage over the Intel platform?

"Tenkine Server channel March 13 message" AMD has confirmed the release of the 64-bit http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13453.html ">arm Server processor this year, It is expected that the micro-server products based on this processor will outperform Intel's similar products in price. And the 64-bit ARM processor for the server market should maintain this style, as Intel's old rival in the PC market has maintained a very pro-populist price. However, the low price of the product does not mean that the enterprise adopt ARM micro-server will reduce costs, the opposite of the enterprise TCO may rise.

The 2013 ARM processor Gongchenglvede in the mobile end market, and even Intel, the chip giant, had to recognise arm's power in the mobile market. ARM Architecture processor is not limited to the IT consumer market, the data center market has become arm's goal. Into the 3721.html ">2014 year, we saw the ARM processor in the data center of the eco-building in the steady progress. In particular, AMD and arm two companies, ARM joint Partners released the ARM server infrastructure System Architecture specifications, the specification is designed for the arm of the SOC definition of basic requirements, to help third-party manufacturers design and manufacture based on ARM processor server products.

Arm server is not only in the hardware standardization of exploration, but also in the software ecosystem is actively promoting, such as the mainstream Linux distribution has begun to support arm architecture. But there are too many things that arm needs to do compared with the dominance of the x86 chip in the data center. The head of Microsoft's data center said it would not be the first to use the ARM server in its own data center because the arm's ecosystem is still imperfect. If Microsoft uses ARM architecture server, application migration is needed. The cost of this migration is high and there are problems with compatibility and performance.

In fact, Microsoft said the enterprise for ARM micro-server concerns, that is, migration costs. And the ARM micro server is just for lightweight workloads, not for data-intensive applications. The x86 architecture is launched for standard server workloads and is fully qualified for high load enterprise applications. Although the ARM server can achieve low power consumption and high density, but based on performance and efficiency considerations, enterprises will still adopt x86 architecture in key business applications.

And Intel is not going to sit back and watch arm's aggressiveness in the server market, and Intel has always been wary of the challenges from arm companies. The company has developed an atom based platform for servers and last year released the C2000 Avoton series with 22 nm technology. Intel says micro-architecture based on new Silvermont has reached or surpassed arm system-level chips in terms of efficiency and performance. In addition, the company will later this year launch the next Generation Atom Server SOC system-level chip, the use of 14 nm technology Denverton.

In the author's opinion, the ARM micro-server is more as a product segmentation appears in the data center market, this is a bit similar to the RISC architecture of small machines, they are for the specific application market product categories. x86 architecture as the universal architecture platform of data center is still the choice of enterprise, and the software and hardware platform around x86 platform is the most perfect. So arm in the data center road is still very long, the construction of the ecological circle is not built up overnight.