Qualcomm plans to return to the server processor segment with new chips, according to Bloomberg. The new chips will be based on the developments of Nuvia startup, which was bought by Qualcomm in 2021.
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The startup was founded by people from Apple to create Phoenix arm processors, which were supposed to be faster and more energy efficient than AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon. After the purchase and subsequent takeover of the company, server solutions were no longer discussed.
Now Qualcomm is about to distribute its business. The company’s attempt to enter the server market is not the first; back in 2018, it abandoned the development of Centriq 2400 series chips and focused on mobile solutions. It is possible that the success of Ampere Computig prompted a shift in Qualcomm's course. Arm processors from Ampere Computig have appeared not only in some second-tier cloud providers, but also in giants like the Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. In addition, these processors appeared in servers from Gigabyte, HPE and other similar companies.
One of the few companies that didn't use processors from Ampere Altra was AWS. It uses the third generation of Graviton Arm-processors of its own design. AWS also has its own DPU, SSD, AI accelerators for training (Trainium) and inference (Inferentia), which together gives an almost complete hardware stack. However, according to the same Bloomberg, the cloud giant, although it continues to purchase products from AMD, Intel and NVIDIA, has also paid attention to new server chips from Qualcomm.
