ARM Community: ARM in Servers: Seeing is Believing - Part 2 - ARM Community

Last week I was privileged to participate in ARM’s annual investor event in London. For those of you who are interested, you can find an audiocast and the foil sets that were used here. This was my first formal presentation in front of this audience, so you can imagine my nervousness. A feeling that was “helped” by the friendly advice from one of ARM’s execs, “Don’t worry Fergie, this is being taped and a transcript will be made available”…..my words and my commitments will live forever!

My 20 minute presentation was really focused on delivering the messages that I have discussed on this and other on-line forums, including:

• Viewing data centers as energy constrained systems which is causing system architects to rethink how they design their platforms
• ARM’s belief that highly integrated system-on-a-chip devices, optimized for specific server applications, will emerge
• Software pieces now in place to enable initial 32-bit server platforms to ship before the end of this year

As many of you will have read on Tuesday, Dell issued an interesting press release on ARM processor based servers. Their release echoes a number of my statements above. More details regarding the platform can be found here. The Dell platform is based on silicon from Marvell Semiconductor, or more specifically, the MV78460 system-on-chip, which is compatible with the ARMv7 instruction set architecture (ISA). With Applied Micro, Calxeda, Marvell and NVIDIA announced as developing system-on-chip devices for various server applications, silicon choice is already a reality in the ARM server domain. Each offers their unique value/differentiation while utilizing a standard processor architecture. Expect choice to broaden further over time. I am particularly impressed by Dell’s commitment to enabling the software ecosystem with platforms that can be accessible via a web connection, utilizing their relationship with Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

As I mentioned in a prior blog, the software ecosystem is coming together. Dell’s announcement will help to further accelerate this. Calxeda recently posted this summary of the software that has already been run on their hardware.



Check back for more details at this site as Calxeda commits to post updates over time.

Once more week in the UK to go, before I head to Computex……….

For more information, see my other blogs on this topic:

• ARM in Servers: Seeing is Believing (14 May 2012)
• ARM in Servers: A Different Path (06 March 2012)
• ARM in Servers: How Small Could This Be? (19 Dec 2011)
• ARM in Servers: How Big Could This Be? (17 Nov 2011)
• What a Difference 7 Days Makes! ARMv8 and HP’s Moonshot Program (01 Nov 2011)
• Server Ecosystem: A Fine Kettle of Fish (20 Oct 2011)

Ian Ferguson, VP Segment Marketing, ARM, has spent years fighting from the corner of the underdog. Most of those scars are healing nicely. Ian is particularly passionate about taking ARM technology into new types of applications that do not exist or are at the very formative stages. After driving ARM’s server program for five years, Ian now leads ARM’s vertical marketing organizations, that supports ARM’s partners to grow their business across a wide range of applications with a view to reinvent the way the server function is implemented in networks as opposed to simply replacing incumbent platforms.