Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., said that it would run several internal cloud services with chips based on ARM designs, which are also used in the vast majority of smartphones and inside gadgets like thermostats and sensors embedded in manufacturing plants.
Qualcomm is developing chips for ARM-based servers to run the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.
Dr Leendert van Doorn, distinguished engineer for Microsoft Azure, revealed the move at the 2017 Open Compute Project Summit in Santa Clara today. Indeed, Cavium CEO Syed Ali boasted on the company's February 1 earnings call that Cavium is "the only shipping ARM server vendor in production today".
Spinning off the Applied Micro compute business shouldn't have much of an immediate impact on the unit's plans, according to Kumar Sankaran, associate vice president of software and platform engineering for the compute business.
KitGuru Says: Microsoft has been stepping up its efforts as far as Windows and ARM are concerned, so a push towards ARM-based datacenters was bound to come around at some point.
Q: What is Cavium's role in today's announcement? . He claimed not a single line of code is different between the ARM64 Windows Server 2016 build for Qualcomm and Cavium's processors. Because MS thinks it's good to have more than one chip player in the datacenter? All of the above/none of the above?
There is an established developer and software ecosystem for ARM (such as high-end smartphone software stacks).
That deal was highly significant at the time, as the Windows operating system has always been anchored to traditional Intel x86 processors, forcing Microsoft to develop separate mobile operating systems (i.e the discontinued Windows Phone) that could run on ARM-based processors.
Microsoft and Qualcomm worked for many years to bring Windows Server to Centriq 2400. Does this mean Olympus servers also can use ARM processors on their motherboards?
Microsoft is now testing these chips for tasks like search, storage, machine learning and big data, Jason Zander, VP of Microsoft's Azure cloud division is reported to have said.
Project Olympus can switch easily from x86 to ARM processors, which tackles one problem of server investment and deployment. The companies are also demonstrating at the OCP Summit web services on a version of Windows Server developed for Microsoft's internal use running cloud services workloads on ThunderX2. Besides, if Microsoft is serious about ARM, then Qualcomm is the natural choice of partners. As we've talked about here at The Next Platform, despite the idea of ARM-based servers being debated for nearly a decade and the pent-up demand among end users for viable alternatives to Intel and its X86-based chips, there has not been widespread adoption of such systems. With Qualcomm and Microsoft pushing this agenda forward as they will both benefit with Microsoft saving money on server purchases and Qualcomm opening up an additional revenue stream, there is a strong driving force to make this product a reality.
I'm assuming this "Azure runs on Windows Server" is just shorthand for the fact that the Windows Server core/OneCore underlies Azure.
Source: Qualcomm, Microsoft team up on data center chips
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