Marvell planning ARM Server 1/5 power vs. x86

EETimes has an article about Marvell's next ARM processers for Servers.

Marvell plans 40-nm ARM server processors
Partners include one working on port of Windows to ARM

Rick Merritt
EE Times
(05/10/2010 7:52 PM EDT)

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Marvell Technology Group Ltd. aims to supply silicon for ARM-based servers with 40-nm multicore processors it will ship this year. It is working with multiple partners including one that hopes to port a server version of Microsoft Windows to ARM.

"We have on the road map quad-core symmetric multiprocressing enterprise ARM-based SoCs that will be here soon," said Simon Milner, vice president of Marvell's enterprise group. "There's a huge opportunity here because the market is x86 dominated and ARM can bring power consumption breakthroughs into this space," he said.

The new chips will offer more than a five-fold reduction in power consumption compared to x86 processors that dominate the server market, Marvell claims. Earlier this year, Marvell announced its Armada 310 that runs at a gigahertz while consuming 700 milliW and will scale to 2 GHz at less than a Watt, Milner said.

And there are ARM servers even planned for Windows.

At least one partner is working on a port of a server version Microsoft Windows to ARM, and has access to some of the low level code needed for that job. "That is a large undertaking," said Milner.

Other partners are working on ports to ARM of x86 virtualization software also strategic for the server market. Some server customers are asking for 64-bit support, but "subsets of the server market can be addressed with 32 bits," Milner said.

For Marvell, the server initiative is one in a series of efforts since it acquired from Intel the XScale ARM design and an ARM architectural license.

"We have had significant success in the last five years taking ARM into new segments such as communications infrastructure and networking systems," he said.

Comments

[Nik Simpson]

> At least one partner is working on a port of a server version> Microsoft Windows to ARM, and has access to some of the low level> code needed for that job. "That is a large undertaking,"> said Milner.

I'm sorry, but that just sounds like hopeful BS, particularly "has access to some of the low level code needed for that job." You need complete access to the windows code base to port it ARM, and the only folks who have that are Microsoft.

Also, the power savings will not be as big as you think, this thing will still need memory, peripherals etc, CPUs are only part of the equation.

[taalib]

Nik,

Re "CPUs are only part of the equation" - yes but for ARM many of the peripherals are on the same SOC.