Arm Server Processors: Intel’s Xeon Chief Architect Now Bolsters Qualcomm 4 Comments
Image: Qualcomm
Intel’s Xeon chief architect and job postings indicate Qualcomm wants to try another server processor. It remains to be seen exactly what Qualcomm might be planning, as the server division was all but abandoned in 2018 and new server products were clearly rejected in 2020.
Sailesh Kottapalli joins Qualcomm
Sailesh Kottapalli worked at Intel for 28 years and now works at Qualcomm. Over the past few years or decades, he was responsible for Xeon as chief architect with Ronak Singhal, who still works at Intel, and determined the direction, he explains in a LinkedIn post. With its help, Xeon became the dominant player in the market, but those days are over.
Not only is AMD steadily eating up market share with Epyc in the x86 segment and reaching never-before-seen heights, but Arm and subsequent developments (e.g. Arm custom chips at Amazon and Google) are also addressing areas that Intel and Kottapalli were not on the radar. In this regard, Intel is also partly responsible for its decline in the Xeon segment.
In the same spirit, a job description announced in December was made public at Qualcomm a few days ago. The company is looking for a server SoC security architect as Qualcomm develops “high-performance, energy-efficient server solutions for data center applications.” So again server processors?
Reboot at Qualcomm
The new positions, although it is unclear what position Kottapalli holds, as well as the know-how Qualcomm has acquired through Nuvia, indicate a new attempt by Qualcomm in the server sector. As is well known, Nuvia initially developed a processor core for the data center before it was reduced by Qualcomm and transplanted to the mobile environment. Today, Nuvia’s expertise is being put to use in the Snapdragon X SoC for Windows on Arm laptops.
In the past, Qualcomm had repeatedly failed in its attempts to establish itself in the data center segment, sometimes with disastrous results. The last major wave of layoffs in this area at Qualcomm took place in late 2018, and in 2020, the then new CEO Cristiano Amon, who is still the boss today, definitively rejected server processors.
However, during Arm’s lawsuit against Qualcomm, it became public that the company was once again dealing in server processors after acquiring Nuvia. That lawsuit was largely dismissed, and Arm is now trying a new trick.
Topics: Processors Qualcomm Server Economy Source: CRN
Marc deciphers processors by testing their performance for gaming, content creation, and artificial intelligence.
