ARM tackles server compatibility issues with Allinea acquisition

From InfoWorld: ARM has a big problem -- it rules in smartphones and tablets but hasn't broken into servers and supercomputers. ARM servers are devalued partly because many applications don't work with the chips.

But ARM has acquired Allinea Software with the hope of partially resolving the compatibility issue. Allinea provides software development, debugging, and porting tools, which should make it easier for people to write applications for ARM-based servers and supercomputers.

The acquisition will "provide a channel to thousands of developers using supercomputers and give us better first-hand knowledge of the issues being addressed as software is ported to new ARM-based systems," Javier Orensanz, general manager of the development solutions group at ARM, said in a blog entry.

The development tools will also be used for ARM chips in deep-learning systems, which require large-scale server deployments for analytics. ARM's competition will come from deep-learning and HPC software tools offered by Intel, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, and more recently, AMD.

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