Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar) on June 4, 2022 9:04 am wrote:

> Qualcomm already tried ARM servers, after they had been in the client business for years.
> They gave up back in 2018.

I got the impression this was a combination of few customers, fighting off Broadcomm, and them not seeing a way to provide something that was definitely better than the other ARM server chips.

> Maybe having higher performance cores will help, but in the
> meantime the big cloud companies have gone all-in on designing their own chips so the highest
> volume potential market for ARM server CPUs has been permanently closed off.
>
> So while what you suggest is possible, if Qualcomm is planning on getting back
> in the server market they are doing a very good job at keeping it a secret.

It's going to be easier for the Nuvia founders to get into servers as part of Qualcomm than as a standalone company.

And I'd be surprised if all the big cloud companies were so keen on their in-house designs that they wouldn't want to even consider a Qualcomm chip. Besides, there's always the possibility of a chip with Nuvia cores and (say) a Microsoft uncore. The assumption has been that an ARM architectural license wouldn't allow Nuvia to license a core to Microsoft, so it might have to come out in a package with Qualcomm on it.

That would (probably) not be something Qualcomm would be free to sell to other customers, but there's no reason why their server offerings should look like Intel's or AMD's -- or IBM's, come to that.