Intel, Google Doubt ARM and Atom Have Chances in Servers

From X-bit Labs: Power efficiency of relatively simplistic microprocessor cores, such as Intel Atom or ARM-based chips is well known and many believe that such central processing units (CPUs) can find their home in data center servers, which are supposed to become "green", in the future. However, specialists from Intel Corp. and Google warn that such cores may not be truly good even for massively-parallel applications due to their natural limitations.

Microprocessors based on ARM architecture designed by various designers consume only a fraction of power compared to chips like AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon developed specifically for servers. Unfortunately, the latest ARM Cortex-A9 and ARM Cortex-A15 "Eagle" cores are still 32-bit and are not x86-compatible. Atom processors consume more than ARM-based chips, but delivers better performance and supports x86. Naturally, many ARM or Atom cores may fit into power envelope of a Xeon processor and thus provide improved parallelism at lower power, something that is needed in data centers.

But there are too many limitations for such servers, according to Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel’s data center unit, and Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of operations and Google fellow at Google. Firstly, neither current ARM nor current Atom designs support 64-bit capability that allows to address higher amounts of memory and process more complex instructions at once. Secondly, ARM designs are not x86 compatible and thus software has to be redeveloped for the new instruction set. Thirdly, slow execution of single-thread operations will slow the actual workflow more than exceptional parallelism will speed it up.

"What is the challenge that ARM has in [servers]? Well, it has an instruction set issue. If you are going to do hosting what application do you host? What is an application porting effort? We did application porting with Itanium, it took us about 10 years. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to port about 14 000 applications. ARM has to port for hosting all those applications over. Second challenge is the A9 and the A15 as we know it are 32-bit processors. Microsoft only supports 64-bit operating systems today. [...] So it’s an instruction set issue as well as a 64-bit issue. Everything we do in servers for real servers will be 64-bit," said Kirk Skaugen at Morgan Stanley technology and telecommunications conference, reports ZDnet web-site.

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