News Qualcomm hires Intel's Xeon architect to lead development of server CPUs

[Admin]

Sailesh Kottapalli to lead development of Qualcomm's server processors.

Qualcomm hires Intel's Xeon architect to lead development of server CPUs : Read more

 

[bit_user]

I wonder whether most of their sales are expected to come from off-the-shelf SKUs, or if they're primarily planning to contract to big cloud operators and server makers to provide customized, built-to-order CPUs.

Also, while it seems a likely bet these will be ARM-based, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them being RISC-V.

 

[ezst036]

I hope being sued by ARM spooked Qualcomm just a little bit and they are at least having RISC-V conversations of the "this is coming sooner rather than later" nature.

 

[bit_user]

I hope being sued by ARM spooked Qualcomm just a little bit and they are at least having RISC-V conversations of the "this is coming sooner rather than later" nature.

That started not long after the whole ARM legal drama got going.

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2023/09/what-is-risc-v-and-why-were-unlocking-its-potential
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It might've been posturing or hedging their bets. Or, maybe just a clear-eyed view towards the future. Probably, more than one of these.

 

[ezst036]

That started not long after the whole ARM legal drama got going.

​

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2023/09/what-is-risc-v-and-why-were-unlocking-its-potential​

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It might've been posturing or hedging their bets. Or, maybe just a clear-eyed view towards the future. Probably, more than one of these.

I sincerely hope so - and if not, now there's news out that ARM wants to raise their rates by 300%.

Hopefully that also helps Qualcomm to make the, uh, "correct" choice.

 

[bit_user]

now there's news out that ARM wants to raise their rates by 300%.

ARM sees the writing on the wall and is racing to maximize their revenue from their ISA before everyone can switch to RISC-V. It's a brutal strategy, but it explains a lot about why they tried taking such a hard line with Qualcomm.

Meanwhile, ARM is pivoting towards designing AI chips, perhaps treating AArch revenue as something to bridge them over to their next big market.

Also, ARM appears to be working on selling their own silicon. Maybe not entire SoCs (although I think they're offering a contracting service that will make custom SoCs per the customer requests), but just chiplets which contain the CPU cores and can be integrated into multi-die solutions, so its customers who make their own chips that incorporate ARM's IP cores don't have to deal with layout and fabbing of that part. The relevance of this to RISC-V is that these capacities further shift ARM's value from the realm of IP into the realm of silicon, which then makes it possible for them to expand their offerings to include RISC-V.