Showing posts with label arm holdings. Show all posts
2017
promises to be an exciting year for servers and the competitiveness of
compute offerings. This year will see this scope of impact not only
include enterprise datacenters and the public cloud, but extend to the
emergence of "edge computing". Edge computing is defined as compute
required to deal with data at or near the point of creation. Among other
things, these devices will include the “ocean” of remote, smart
sensors, commonly included in internet of things (IoT) discussions.
Here
is a list of a few things to we’ll see concerning specific CPUs.
It
should come as no surprise that Intel INTC -0.16% continues to dominate
(>99%) the server market but is under enormous pressure on all fronts. Xeon
and its evolution continue to be their compute vanguard. Xeon-Phi (and now the
addition of Nervana) make up their engines for high-performance computing /
machine learning. Phi has seen some success, but it isn’t clear yet how Nervana
offerings will materialize.
Advanced
Micro Devices AMD -0.57% (AMD) has their best shot in years for fielding an
Intel competitor that just about everyone (except perhaps Intel) is eager to
see. If the AMD Zen server CPU is simply good enough (meaning, it shows up,
works and has at least some performance value), it will take market share
simply by being an x86 competitor. AMD is encouraged by early indicators. They
also have their ATI GPGPU technology which will provide additional
opportunities.
ARM
Holdings will continue to dominate the mobile and embedded device space, but
the fight is hard in these segments. The more likely opportunity for ARM
expansion will be at the "edge" and not so much in the server space.
The death of Vulcan by Avago, the acquisition of Applied Micro Circuits (APM)
and their plan to find a place for X-Gene leaves the Cavium CAVM +0.69%
ThunderX, the "yet to be launched" Qualcomm QCOM -0.02% Centriq CPU
and a few other very focused ARM initiatives still standing. After years of
"This is the Year for ARM Servers", the outlook could be better, and
if AMD produces a plausible Intel competitor (capable of running x86 software),
it will put extreme pressure on whole ARM server CPU initiative.
OpenPOWER
seems on the other hand to have a lot of momentum but to date has not
significantly impacted the x86 server market. 2017 may end on a different note.
OpenPOWER‘s (IBM IBM -1.27%) willingness to embrace NVIDIA NVDA -0.74% (the
darling of the machine learning segment) and embed an NV-Link interface is
going to play well with much of AI and HPC communities. By the end of the year,
we will have seen some interesting OpenPOWER offerings emerge based on advanced
silicon process technology from a variety of sources, and 2018 may see a whole
different story. Especially if an embrace from Google GOOGL -0.14%, who has
been flirting with OpenPOWER for a while now, materializes and creates a
tipping point.
The
real challenge to all CPUs is the way they do work. Their philosophy is built
on the principle that data must come into the chip, be operated on by the chip,
with results or even new data being pushed out of the chip. This whole process
creates a natural bottleneck that we've flirted with for decades. As the
magnitude and scope of data increases, something has got to give, and a
favorite candidate is more parallelism. So far, this has favored GPGPUs or
accelerators.
At
the bigger-picture business level for datacenters and the public cloud, the
real question is not so much which CPU (in fact, the business folks probably
couldn't care less), but the economics of private, public or hybrid solutions.
It is safe to say enterprise computing will not disappear any time soon, and
while there is much activity, the implementations and economics of hybrid
solutions have proven to be difficult. According to Gartner, by 2020 more
compute power will have been sold by IaaS and PaaS cloud providers than sold
and deployed into enterprise datacenters. The fact that companies (especially
smaller ones) are either being born in or moving to the cloud at a rapid pace
is undeniable. However, NOT all are seeing the expected saving materialize from
this move. 2017 will certainly see some careful thinking and maybe even some
rethinking of strategy.
The
explosion of data at the edge is simply going to change data processing as we
know it and will create a variety of computing problems that are difficult to
do in the cloud (even though the results may end up there). However, they may
not be in the enterprise datacenters as we know them either, and we may find
them “stuck” all over the place. For more than sixty years, we have seen
compute follow the data. First from the original mainframe datacenter to the
desktop, to departmental servers, into enterprise datacenters, and now
significantly into the cloud. It is my opinion, that If you plan to put just
your data into the cloud, economics (the cost of network usage) will drive your
compute there sooner or later. You want to consider this carefully based on
your actual needs and usage. There might be a better overall business outcome,
depending on your size and ability to operate, in your own datacenter.
The
major emerging source of data is at the edge and will drive the need for much
compute there. By the way, all the CPUs mentions here should be able do the
edge reasonably well so … Game on again!
Disclosure:
My firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms,
provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to
many high-tech companies in the industry including Advanced Micro Devices,
Applied Micro Circuits, ARM Holdings, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm. I do not
hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.
Perhaps this will succeed where Windows RT failed.
Microsoft dipped its toe in the ARM waters with Windows RT but it ultimately proved a failure, primarily because of the lack of applications. That doesn't mean the company is going to give up on the dominant mobile market processor, however.
At the WinHEC show in China last week, Microsoft announced it has finally created a native version of Windows 10 running on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors with full x86 compatibility. This isn't Windows RT, it's full Windows 10, but you’ll be able to run Win32 apps and Windows Universal Apps.
The initial version of ARM Windows 10 only supports 32-bit apps, but that's not a big deal since most mobile devices have 4GB of memory or less anyway. And it should be noted this is Windows 10 on Snapdragon, not Windows 10 on ARM. Sure, Qualcomm's processors are fairly ubiquitous but they aren't everywhere. You won't be running Windows 10 on an iPad any time soon.
This enables Microsoft to get down into the lower-cost mobile market. The Surface tablets and notebooks are nice but they aren't cheap. That's partly due to being essentially x86 PCs. An ARM-based tablet has an overall lower cost of materials and lower price, so it gets Windows into places Microsoft currently isn't playing with the Surface line.
"For the first time ever, our customers will be able to experience the Windows they know with all the apps, peripherals, and enterprise capabilities they require, on a truly mobile, power efficient, always-connected cellular PC," said Windows chief Terry Myerson in a blog post announcing the breakthrough, along with other WinHEC news.
"With Windows 10 on cellular PCs, we will help everyone make the most of the air around them. We look forward to seeing these new devices with integrated cellular connectivity and the great experiences people love like touch, pen and Windows Hello, in market as early as next year," he added.
PCWorld (a sister publication of Computerworld) reports that the emulation will be built around a new, unreleased chip the Snapdragon 835 that's in production now and is due to ship in the first half of 2017, according to Qualcomm. The first Windows-on-ARM devices are expected by the second half of next year.
This will be a major challenge for Qualcomm. Emulation is always tricky business. Remember Transmeta? The difference here is Intel has basically given up on the mobile market. It bailed out of the tablet and smartphone business last year, basically handing it to ARM. So at least they don't have to deal with Intel on the hardware side.
But Qualcomm still faces a considerable challenge of ARM-to-x86 emulation. We don't know anything on the performance specs of the 835, only that it's a 10nm part.
Parties to work together to accelerate virtualized BBUs based on General-Purpose Processors
SAN JOSE, CA December 8th, 2016 - Today, Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for Enterprise, Telco, MSP and cloud data centers, announced an agreement with China Unicom to accelerate the design and development of Virtualized BBU and provide a path for 5G adoption. The collaboration will focus on commercializing vBBU systems using general purpose hardware based on Cavium’s ThunderX® workload optimized data server processors which are built on ARM architecture. In addition, Cavium has joined the China Unicom CORD Industry Alliance and will drive adoption of open source architecture and technologies in China together with China Unicom.
China Unicom and Cavium will work together on new innovative fronthaul solutions, system architecture and vBBU performance and deployment. This collaboration allows Cavium to align with China Unicom’s commercial networks technology development and innovation, research feasibility of Next Generation Virtualized Wireless Access Network, perform lab and field testing, evaluate results, drive deployment of developed technologies into commercial network, carry out lab and field performance test and assessment, accelerate pilot and application of new technical innovations in real-world networks.
“We are very pleased to collaborate with China Unicom in this critical area. As network capacity continues to be stretched and the user demands continue to grow the industry is faced with significant challenges which cannot be solved by traditional means,” said Raj Singh General Manager of the Wireless Broadband Group at Cavium. “The use of advanced general purpose hardware such as Cavium’s ThunderX workload optimized data severs allows us to provide a highly scalable virtualized solution for these requirements.”
“Virtualized network based on general purpose hardware and open source technologies represents the overall direction for future network changes. China Unicom partners with Cavium, a leader in virtualized BBU technology field, to drive R&D of virtualization products based on general purpose processors, thus laying a solid foundation for building new generation of network infrastructure,” said Dr. Tang Xiongyan, CTO of Network Technology Research Institute, China Unicom.
About Cavium
Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors ranging in performance from 1Gbps to 100Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in Enterprise, Data Center, Broadband/Consumer, Mobile and Service Provider Equipment, highly programmable switches which scale to 3.2Tbps and Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters up to 100Gbps. Cavium processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating systems, tools and application support, hardware reference designs and other products. Cavium is headquartered in San Jose, CA with design centers in California, Massachusetts, India, China and Taiwan. For more information, please visit: http://www.cavium.com.
Media Contact
Angel Atondo
Sr. Marketing Communications Manager
Telephone: +1 408-943-7417
Email: angel.atondo@cavium.com
