AMD announces ARM-based server chips for 2014

30 Oct 2012

AMD and ARM will partner to bring to market processors optimised for energy-efficient data centre computing

After months of heavy hints and widespread speculation, semiconductor company AMD has announced its partnership with UK-based chip design specialist ARM to develop 64-bit ARM processors for servers.

“AMD will transform the computing data centre environment today,” said AMD CEO and president Rory Read at a press conference on Monday afternoon. AMD, he pointed out, will be the first company to offer both 64-bit x86 and ARM server processors.  ­“We’re going to open up the next level of computing with ARM 64, transforming the server arena into a whole new opportunity,” he said.

AMD’s first ARM-based processor will be a “highly integrated, 64-bit multicore system-on-a-chip (SoC) optimised for the dense, energy-efficient servers that now dominate the largest data centers and power the modern computing experience,” according to a company statement. The first ARM technology-based AMD Opteron processor is targeted for production in 2014. The company will continue to make 64-bit x86 chips as well, Read stressed.

The data centre market is one that ARM CEO Warren East discussed with IP EXPO Online less than a month ago. As he explained then, data centre managers everywhere, facing rising bills for powering and cooling their servers, would love to be able to tap into the low power consumption associated with the ultra energy-efficient chips that ARM designs. Early indications provided by ARM-based server prototypes running in the company’s labs have pointed to power savings of between 75 percent and 90 percent, compared to x86 servers with comparable compute power.

Now, East’s diversification ambitions for ARM suddenly look much more achievable with AMD on the company’s side in this new battleground.

For AMD, meanwhile, it’s a much-needed chance to steal a march on arch-rival Intel, which has a long history of out-executing AMD, despite the latter’s many notable innovations - not least of which was introducing the first mainstream 64-bit x86 server chip with the launch of the AMD Opteron in 2003.

AMD’s position has looked rather fragile recently, with the company reporting lower-than-expected sales for its third quarter and announcing plans to lay off around 15 percent of its staff. Last week, at its financial results call, Read acknowledged that the company needs to diversify beyond the PC market, where it faces “a very challenging selling environment, especially in the lower end of the consumer client space” - or in other words, mobile devices, a market it has avoided for years, at great cost to its overall prosperity. The server market, then, presents an opportunity for AMD to regain some lost ground.

It’s no wonder, then, that Read was so keen to talk up the partnership with ARM in the most glowing terms and to remind stakeholders of the company’s innovative past: “AMD led the data centre transition to mainstream 64-bit computing with AMD64, and with our ambidextrous strategy we will again lead the next major industry inflection point by driving the widespread adoption of energy-efficient 64-bit server processors based on both the x86 and ARM architectures,” he said.

For AMD, the stakes are very high and it can expect fierce competition in this new market. Just last week, systems maker Calxeda (in which ARM is an investor) took the opportunity of a new funding round to announce its plans to bring ARM servers to market, also for 2014. HP, Dell, Applied Micro and others are interested in this market, too, and are expected to introduce products based on chips from Calxeda, Marvell and Cavium.

At ARM, meanwhile, executives can afford to take a great deal of satisfaction from this deal. The company’s CEO Warren East wasn’t able to attend the AMD press conference as planned, thanks to Superstorm Sandy; he delivered his address via video instead, shot in the back of a London black cab at Heathrow Airport.

“The industry needs to continuously innovate across markets to meet customers’ ever-increasing demands and ARM and our partners are enabling increasingly energy-efficient computing solutions to address these needs,” he said. “By collaborating with ARM, AMD is able to leverage its extraordinary portfolio, including its AMD Freedom supercompute fabric, with ARM 64-bit cores to build solutions that deliver on this demand and transform the industry.”