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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Published by the IEEE Computer Society 0018-9162/11/$26.00 © 2011 IEEE

Chipmakers ARM for Battle in Traditional Computing MarketSixto Ortiz Jr.

A battle is brewing in the chip marketplace: ARM proces-sors are poised to invade traditional devices such as

tablets, laptops, desktops, and even servers. This is new territory for ARM chips, which now dominate mobile devices.

Joe Clabby, president of market research firm Clabby Analytics, says he’s seeing increases in both ARM chip development and investments by ARM-based system developers and manufacturers. This trend, he adds, combined with the growing need to drive down datacenter power consumption, could mean that big things are in store for the ARM architecture.

It’s clear, however, that entrenched players in the nonmobile market such as Intel and AMD aren’t going to take this challenge lying down.

MARKET OVERVIEW The recent sales growth of powerful

mobile devices such as smartphones has been a boon for companies that specialize in the design and manufacture of low-power ARM chips. Much like Intel dominates the PC and server processor market, ARM dominates the mobile device chip

market. Unlike Intel, however, ARM licenses its technology to developers and manufacturers, who create the chips themselves. Qualcomm, for example, manufactures the popular Snapdragon processor. Other ARM licensees include Nvidia, Texas Instruments (TI), Samsung, and Marvell.

The ARM architecture is designed to deliver power economy, an essential requirement for mobile devices that rely on long battery lives. However, there’s also a need for higher performance as mobile applications get increasingly complex and mobile operating systems, such as Android and Symbian, become more sophisticated. For example, the delivery of movies requires processors that can seamlessly play back video content.

Chipmakers such as Nvidia and Samsung use ARM’s Cortex-A MPCore series design to develop systems on a chip (SoCs) for various devices including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, printers, routers, and wireless base stations. These systems can combine up to four 32-bit cores with other ancillary functions such as graphics processing and security.

Intel’s—and to a lesser extent, AMD’s—x86 a rchitect ure ha s prevailed in the laptop and desktop markets. The server market, on the other hand, has a bit more competition, featuring processors from Intel (Xeon and Itanium), Oracle/Sun (SPARC), and IBM (POWER).

The key variable in the laptop, desktop, and server markets is per-formance. This is especially true for servers, which must process the heavy computing workloads required to run enterprise-class applications such as transactional business systems and high-end databases. However, as datacenter device densities have increased, the focus has shifted to reducing power consumption to minimize cooling and air-circulation expenses.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ARMARM chipmakers are now working

on designs for higher-end, nonmobile devices such as laptops, PCs, and servers that primarily rely on x86 processors.

A key driver for ARM chips in the server market is low power con-sumption. As datacenters accumulate equipment such as rack-mounted blade servers, the energy costs to

Despite many significant challenges, ARM chip developers are pushing ahead with plans to go beyond mobile devices and enter the laptop, desktop, and server markets.

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ARM CoreSight multicore debug and trace

Cortex-A9 MPCore

Generic interrupt control and distribution

Snoop control unit (SCU)

Dual 64-bit AMBA3 AXI

Privateperipherals

Acceleratorcoherence

Preloadengine

Direct cachetransfers

FPU/NEONData engine

FPU/NEONData engine

FPU/NEONData engine

FPU/NEONData engine

Integer CPU Integer CPU Integer CPU Integer CPU

L1 cache L1 cache L1 cache L1 cache

Snoop�ltering

Source: ARM

Figure 1. ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor in a multicore (four cores, in this case) configuration. Each core includes a floating-point unit (FPU) and integrated L1 caches. The snoop control unit (SCU) manages interconnects, arbitration, communications, cache-to-cache and memory transfers, cache coherence, and so on for the processor.

president of and principal analyst with J. Gold Associates, other than the iPad, the vast majority of tablets will use Android, which runs very well on ARM-based devices.

Other notable developments include ZT Systems’ announcement in November 2010 that it has built an ARM-based server using up to 16 Cortex-A9 processor cores, shown in Figure 1. Compal Electronics, the world’s second-largest maker of notebook computers, said it’s going to use ARM chips in 90 percent of the 3.8 million tablet devices it will ship this year.

Any successful chip platform must have software support to survive. A major reason for the

keep these devices cool become more important. The power demands of server chips such as Intel’s have increased in recent years, along with the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour, says Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at the Linley Group. At the same time, he adds, server prices have fallen, making energy costs a greater portion of the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Ian Ferguson, ARM’s Director of Data Center Solutions, says that because the ARM architecture evolved in a low-power, battery-operated environment, the resulting CPU implementations have always been designed to consume small amounts of power. To be successful in the laptop, desktop, and server markets, he says, ARM technology must be optimized outside the processor block. For example, Nvidia’s Project Denver couples high-performance graphics technology with an ARM chip to create numerous advanced computing applications.

Karl Freund, vice president of marketing at Calxeda, a developer of ARM-based datacenter servers, says lower-cost, lower-power, and higher-density ARM chip designs will be able to compete in the server marketplace. They will use the same ARM core processors extended with additional features and functions needed for servers including ECC (error-correcting code) memory, larger caches, on-board graphics engines, and I/O such as Ethernet, Freund adds.

Unlike Intel’s CISC (complex-instruction-set computing) chips, which process large chunks of complex instructions, ARM chips use RISC (reduced-instruction-set computing) architectures that execute simpler instructions much faster to deliver higher performance, giving them a speed advantage.

Although many server chips—such as Intel and HP’s Itanium—are 64-bit, Freund says numerous server applications run on 32 bits. For

example, he points out, most Java applications run on 32-bit JVMs, and the Apache Web server runs fine on 32 bits, as do some new applications such as Apache Hadoop and NoSQL databases. In short, servers that aren’t required to process heavy computing workloads don’t have as great a need for 64-bit performance.

Apple’s popular iPad tablet features an ARM chip: the company’s just released iPad 2 runs the iOS operating system (same as the iPhone) powered by the dual-core Cortex-A5 processor. In addition, Motorola has adopted Nvidia’s Tegra 2 chipset for its Xoom tablet. In fact, tablets represent a great market opportunity for ARM: according to Jack E. Gold,

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The Linley Group’s Gwennap estimates that ARM chips could potentially perform 30 percent better while consuming about the same amount of power as lower-tier Intel server chips. However, this might not be a large enough advantage to motivate original equipment manufacturers to change processor architectures, he adds.

In addition, Intel’s enormous manufacturing process capability will be hard for any competitor to match. By the time 40-nm ARM chips enter production, Gwennap says, Intel will already be using its 22-nm process.

Robert Crooke, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Atom and System-on-a-Chip Development Group (ASDG), says the company’s process manufacturing advantage will not be easy for ARM to meet. “We think this is why Intel will ultimately prevail in phones and tablets, a traditional ARM beachhead, and why it will be difficult for ARM to encroach in any meaningful way into our traditional markets,” explains Crooke. And, he adds, scale is needed to develop processors in volume. “While we may see some ARM devices in the PC market over time,” he says, “we’re skeptical that there will be any kind of significant volumes.”

Even though ARM processors will be priced advantageously, Gwennap says Intel could eliminate this edge by reducing lower-tier server chip prices to match ARM and protecting margins for its higher-end, higher-priced chips like Xeon. Intel could also choose to compete with ARM using a multicore Atom-based chip.

Despite many significant chal-lenges, ARM chip developers are pushing ahead with plans

to go beyond mobile devices and enter the laptop, desktop, and server markets. During the past 20 years, says Calxeda’s Freund, a low-cost but good-enough solution has always beaten out a “better” and faster solu-

Calxeda products will deliver 5-10 times better performance per watt per dollar spent on servers than x86-based solutions, significant reducing datacenter costs. An established Unix/Linux ecosystem, he adds, will also contribute to ARM’s success in the server market. Calxeda recently secured $48 million in venture capital to complete development of its ARM-based datacenter servers.

ARM’s Ferguson says the tra-ditional computing market’s focus is now shifting to battery life. This is

an area of strength for ARM and its partners, since battery life is king in mobile devices. ARM tablets, he adds, are delivering 10 hours of continuous Web service or video on a 25-Whr battery. When applied to notebook applications, this level of power savings will dramatically impact form factor and the ability to work on the go.

For desktops and servers, the lower power will reduce the need for cooling and electricity, says Ferguson. Again, this will enable smaller form factors as well as increase the density of compute capability in a given area.

CHALLENGESBefore ARM can declare victory in

its foray into the desktop and server markets, it must overcome several challenges.

For starters, says Gold, servers are primarily based on performance through fast I/O and less so on CPU power. Because mobile ARM processors aren’t optimized for I/O as server chips need to be, this presents a potential obstacle for designers of server-targeted ARM chips.

x86 architecture’s dominance is Intel’s virtual lock on Windows applications. ARM chips, however, aren’t currently compatible with Windows applications. Where, then, does that leave ARM chipmakers in the nonmobile marketplace?

Microsoft recently announced plans to port the next iteration of Windows to the ARM architecture, news that has energized developers and manufacturers who want to extend ARM into desktops and servers. The company says that Windows

8 will support SoC architectures including those ARM-based systems from Nvidia, Qualcomm, and TI. During the January 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft executives demonstrated popular applications such as Internet Explorer and Office running on an ARM-powered system.

ARM’S POTENTIALThe primary drivers for ARM

should be cost and simplicity, says Clabby of Clabby Analytics. ARM chips are much cheaper than general-purpose and specialty microprocessors and, due to their low cost, there is no need to virtualize, reducing complexity.

Gold of J. Gold Associates says ARM chips could be a viable contender in low-power, Unix/Linux-based servers, especially those used for Web and cloud-based services, where Windows is less of a requirement.

Ca l xed a’s Freund bel ieves his company has a sustainable advantage in lower TCO costs, based on ARM processor power efficiencies coupled with specific proprietary enhancements. He says

ARM chips are much cheaper than general-purpose and specialty microprocessors and, due to their low cost, there is no need to virtualize, reducing complexity.

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In terms of servers, Ferguson says, the first companies to adopt ARM chips will be those with significant power, system density, or cost issues that see a significant TCO benefit in migrating to a new platform. “There will be a real battle between ARM-based and Atom-based systems going after this market,” Gold observes.

Sixto Ortiz Jr. is a freelance technol-ogy writer based in Amarillo, Texas. Contact him at sortiz1965@gmail.com.

Intel’s Crooke says that even if Windows is ported to the ARM architecture, re-porting all of the applications will be painstakingly d i f f icu lt . In ser vers , Crooke wonders whether ARM can be truly successful without a 64-bit architecture. And, he adds, ARM chips have only one socket, whereas most servers sold today have two sockets.

ARM’s Ferguson admits software applications will be a challenge, but he feels this will be short-lived because applications targeting tablet and notebook devices will soon work on the desktop. Also, he expects key PC legacy applications to move quickly to the ARM architecture. For users, this means cleaner systems and updated applications.

tion. Price wins every time, and the apps will follow the money, he adds. Freund sees the ARM server chip market growing to more than $8 bil-lion in revenue in the next five years.

Clabby of Clabby Analytics says low cost, a precipitous drop in power consumption to execute workloads, and simplicity will make the ARM architecture a slam dunk for adoption in the server marketplace.

A huge factor in ARM’s success is how Intel responds. Although companies are looking at ARM-based low-power servers as viable alternatives, Gold of J. Gold Associates says, Windows-based servers aren’t going away anytime soon. And, he adds, numerous Atom-based server designs will compete on price, power, and performance in this market.

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