Apple’s rapid move to Arm-based systems-on-a-chip shows the industry how quickly such a switch can be possible if designed correctly. Canalys analysts believe Arm’s architecture is advancing so quickly that Arm-powered SoCs will take him a sizeable share of the PC market and half of his cloud server market in just four years. . But not everyone in the industry is so optimistic.
“In 2026, four years from 2050, half of cloud processors will be ARM-based and 30% of PCs will be ARM-based,” said Steve Brazier, president and CEO of market research firm Canalys. says Mr.report at the event Digi Times (opens in new tab)“This is an extraordinary event, an industry-changing event, and it is not being taken seriously enough.
30% of PCs by 2026
Arm already controls a good chunk of the PC market. These days, almost 100% of the PCs sold by Apple are based on M-series SoCs, and in Q3 2022, it dominated his 13.5% of the PC market in terms of units. IDC (opens in new tab)Additionally, the company increased its shipments from 7.174 million Macs in Q3 2021 to 10.06 million systems in Q3 2022 amid worsening demand. That’s quite an accomplishment, while his Arm-powered SoC also powers loads of cheap Chromebooks. While such systems are less prevalent, it’s safe to say that Arm architecture will already account for at least 15% of PC boxes sold in Q3 2022.
According to Dean McCarron of Mercury Research, this assumption may be a little too optimistic. He estimates that Arm will account for his 13.1% of PC client processors in Q3 2022, up from 9.4% in Q2 2022 and up from 8.9% in Q3 2022. . GPUs may be available this quarter or next quarter. Given the PC maker’s destocking and Apple’s increase in his PC sales, it’s not surprising that the share of x86 CPUs sold in Q3 fell. In any case, Arm’s processor share is growing thanks to Apple and Chromebooks.
McCarron told Tom’s Hardware:
Arm vs x86 Consumer Market Share Q2 2022
| Arm and x86 market share | QQ22 | 2Q22 | 1Q22 | 4Q21 | 3Q21 | 2Q21 | 1Q21 | Q4 2020 | Q2 2020 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arm unit share | 13.1% | 9.5% | 11.3% | 10.3% | 8.3% | ~7.0% | 5.9% | 3.4% | less than 2% |
The head of Canalys believes Arm could grow further in the PC space, especially if major PC suppliers such as HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus develop their own Arm-based SoCs. . But, at least according to the DigiTimes article, Qualcomm doesn’t mention efforts by Lenovo and HP to drive his Snapdragon platform into always-on laptops and come up with something more powerful based on Nuvia’s tech. Still, Qualcomm could be a significant player, especially in notebooks.
It is hard to imagine HP, Dell, or Lenovo developing their own Arm-based SoCs for PCs to differentiate themselves from each other and offer their own competitive advantages. Now chips are expensive to develop, and these companies sell tons of PCs with completely different configurations, so you’ll need several different SoCs to serve every market. Given the relatively low profit margins in the PC market, it’s unlikely that these companies will try to replace their processors with AMD or Intel processors. In the meantime, they may start ordering customized versions of the chips from major CPU designers. With a multi-chiplet design like Intel’s Meteor Lake, we should be able to easily add his IP from a third party to the processor, albeit speculating.
With Apple gaining share, it remains to be seen whether the Arm architecture will actually capture 15%-17% of the client PC market over the next four years (although Apple owns a third of the PC market). not expected to occupy). 2026) or because the joint effort of Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek does the job. But given the tremendous amount of work being done around Arm, the technology is poised to see increased adoption.
Arm adoption in the Windows space, on the other hand, will largely depend on experience with Arm-based machines running Windows 12. This happens to be when Qualcomm rolls out his Nuvia-based Snapdragon.
“Finding out that Intel and AMD are suddenly fighting to protect their business is an incredible shock,” said Brazier.
50% of cloud servers by 2026
Servers are another frontier that Arm architecture has entered fairly recently, thanks to data center-grade SoCs from Ampere, AWS, and Huawei. According to Omdia, Arm SoCs accounted for about 7.1% of the server market in Q2 2022. Omdia only tracks data center machines, so we are talking about white box servers, tower servers and hyperconverged used by blades, rack servers and hyperscalers. However, edge servers, mission/business critical machines, and other niche markets are not covered.
In the next few years, we will see more Arm server processors from other manufacturers such as SiPearl and Chinese cloud giants. U.S. Export Controls. As such, Arm’s share of the data center will increase.
As the cost of running cloud machines increases, it makes sense to design highly customized SoCs for specific applications, and CPU cores based on the Arm architecture meet the requirements of specific applications. can be customized as Furthermore, SoCs, by definition, are designed with specific requirements in mind.
In fact, even Intel admits that custom chips are very well suited for cloud servers. As such, he is happy to produce both Arm and x86 based SoCs of his for IFS customers as part of the IDM 2.0 strategy.
But neither Intel nor AMD are giving up half the cloud server market without a fight. AMD is set to release a 128-core Bergamo processor codenamed based on the Zen 4c microarchitecture optimized for cloud and hyperscalers. Intel, on the other hand, has incorporated a number of dedicated accelerators into his 60-core Sapphire Rapids CPUs to address the specific needs of both enterprise and hyperscale customers.
However, not everyone wants Arm-based servers. Enterprises with tens of thousands of servers running applications developed for x86 are unlikely to adopt Arm, and Arm’s advantages for enterprises are not obvious. Brazier therefore believes that the first major market his Arm-based SoCs will address will be in the cloud his servers. He believes Arm’s advantage in this market is so great that this architecture will be used in his 50% of cloud server SoCs.
Over the next few years, we will see more Arm server processors from other manufacturers such as SiPearl and Chinese cloud giants. Assuming these manufacturers can develop SoCs that can be mass produced and shipped to China at reasonable yields without violating recent US regulations. export regulation. Therefore, Arm’s share in the data center will increase.
As the cost of running cloud machines increases, it makes sense to design highly customized SoCs for specific applications, and CPU cores based on the Arm architecture can be customized to meet very specific application requirements. can meet the requirements of Furthermore, SoCs, by definition, are designed with specific requirements in mind.
In fact, even Intel admits that custom chips are very well suited for cloud servers. As such, he is happy to produce both Arm and x86 based SoCs of his for IFS customers as part of the IDM 2.0 strategy.
But neither Intel nor AMD are giving up half the cloud server market without a fight. AMD is set to release a 128-core Bergamo processor codenamed based on the Zen 4c microarchitecture optimized for cloud and hyperscalers. Intel, on the other hand, has incorporated a number of dedicated accelerators into his 60-core Sapphire Rapids CPUs to address the specific needs of both enterprise and hyperscale customers.
However, not everyone wants Arm-based servers. Companies with tens of thousands of servers are unlikely to adopt Arm because they are running applications developed for x86 and the advantages of Arm are unclear. Brazier therefore believes that the first major market his Arm-based SoCs will address will be in the cloud his servers. Apparently, Arm’s advantage in this market is so great that he thinks this architecture will end up being used in his 50% of cloud server SoCs.
