Qualcomm set to play a ‘big beast’ role in server chips
1 min read
Although known mainly for building chips that power smartphones, Qualcomm has been quietly expanding its area of interest for some time; it makes MEMS based displays and has a wireless charging subsidiary, for example.
If you are to believe the various market predictions, there will be more than 20billion devices connected to the Internet of Things within the next few years.
The devices will, in the main, be collecting data and sending it to 'the cloud', where applications will perform some kind of analysis and issue some kind of command in response. In other words, data centres will represent a significant business opportunity – and this hasn't escaped the attention of Qualcomm's CEO, who says the sector will be worth $15billion a year by 2020.
Qualcomm will, of course, build its server chips using ARM cores. CEO Steve Mollenkopf told the company's recent investor meeting that it is in a 'unique position' as one of the few ARM licensees to target leading edge process technologies.
Qualcomm isn't the first company to target ARM cores at data centres, but it will probably the biggest beast, although AMD might have something to say about that.
The interesting thing about Qualcomm's pitch is that it has seen the opportunity will be with data centre companies building their own servers. "They want alternatives," Mollenkopf asserted. That implies they want an alternative to the x86 architecture – and that Qualcomm wants to eat Intel's lunch.
