Intel is starting to see a lot of competition in the server-chip market, especially as companies like ARM make plans to introduce ultra-low-power chips for enterprise users. However, it seems like the chip-giant has no plans to use its Atom CPUs to compete in that arena.
Some vendors were showing off many-Atom servers at IDF last month, but Intel vice president Kirk Skaugen told IDG that it will not push the chips for that purpose.
"We are not opposed to an Atom based server, but we just don't see broad adoption of the Atom as a server chip," he told the news service, adding that he felt that such servers would only address a niche market. Skaugen also referred to an article by Google fellow Urs Hölzle suggesting that - in the vast majority of cases - groups of low-power chips couldn't outperformed a single server-class CPU.
On the one hand, Intel's move seems uncontroversial. Pushing its low-power - and low-margin - chips for use in servers could cannibalise the market for its higher-end server CPUs. This is especially true since the cost-per-core of an Atom processor is likely to be much lower than the vast majority of Xeon chips. Furthermore, with eight-core, 16-thread Sandy Bridge CPUs also on the horizon, single-core Atom chips may start to lose their performance-per-watt advantage.
However, Intel's failure to enter the market could leave the door wide open for the competition. Not only is ARM eying the enterprise market, but AMD has expressed an interest in leveraging the power of the low-power Bobcat architecture for use in certain servers. The hiring of Intel alumnus Donald Newell was specifically thought to help these efforts.
