Barron's had reported on Qualcomm's announcing its data center effort in its latest analyst call.
“Perhaps the most interesting and surprising part of Mollenkopf’s presentation was his discussion of how the company is finally entering the server market, riding the wave of implementations of new kinds of data centers, where entities such as Google (GOOGL) build their own servers. That should bring Qualcomm into direct competition with server-chip Titan Intel (INTC).
Said Mollenkopf, the kinds of requirements that have nurtured the architecture of mobile device semiconductors is becoming more and more relevant to the way server chips must be designed. “The high end of the smartphone and the tablet really are starting to merge with what would be feasible in the data center.”
In addition to the architecture of mobile coming to servers, Mollenkopf sees an advantage in servers in the fact that the company can get its chips made in the most advanced semiconductor processes. “Our ability to go to the leading node puts us in a unique position.”
“It will take us awhile to build this business, but we think it’s an interesting business.””
And the rest of the tech media referenced this post and one image. Turns out there are 4 slides from the investor meeting. Let's start with one way far at the end slide #76 that shows where data centers are in other initiatives at Qualcomm for future growth.
As Dileep Bhandarkar presented in August 2014 on his life from Mainframe to Mobile, there is a movement from below to disrupt the data center industry.
Here is another slide from the investor review that shows Qualcomm's plan to come from its strength of high volume smartphones and move into mobile computing and data centers.
In this slide Qualcomm identifies the markets it sees for ARM - The cloud era and software defined data center.
And the last slide. Well this isn't actually the last slide. It is the 2nd slide in the deck that mentions "data center", but so many times I find the order in what gets presented misses the opportunity to tell the story.
This slide explains the vision of an integrated cloud. It does make sense that an ARM mobile environment could support the development of an ARM server cloud environment.
There are some of you who are going to blow this off as just another anti-Intel (x86) initiative.
Here is something to think about. What Qualcomm is explaining as the integrated cloud is being built by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Samsung.
“iCloud
iCloud connects you and your Apple devices in amazing ways. It makes sure you always have the latest versions of your most important things — like documents, apps, notes, and contacts — on whatever device you are using. It lets you easily share photos, calendars, locations, and more with friends and family. It even helps you find your device if you lose it. And iCloud does it all automatically. Just like that.”