ARM’s 64-bit dreams

There was a time when ARM processors were strictly for small devices such as mobile phones and embedded applications. But now the British processor maker has bigger ambitions: the data centre.

ARM’s early successes were in the mobile phone arena as its processors were small and used very little power. But in terms of processing ability, ARM processors were not particularly powerful, and so weren’t suited to much more than basic smartphones.

Much has changed since then and today ARM processors are everywhere, from smartphones, to tablet PCs, to laptops.

Their compact size has made them popular for mobile applications but it’s their power efficiency that’s likely to lead to a boom in ARM’s market share over the coming years. Already many data centre operators are looking at ARM-based systems to provide the processing power they need while keeping the power consumption down.

Now ARM is looking to boost its chances in the data centre with plans for a 64-bit version of its processors; plans it revealed at it’s ARM TechCon 2011 conference late last month.

ARM’s current architecture is known as ARMv7. The new architectures will be known as ARMv8 and will support 64-bit instructions that will be fully compatible with 32-bit code and ARMv7., headline

The new ARMv8 specifications are expected to be released in late 2012 and the first mass produced 64-bit processors will be launched in 2014.

Although some way off, Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) already has plans for a system-on-chip which will run a customised version of Linux. These will be known as X-Gene and will contain multiple cores and clock speeds of up to 3GHz.

In standby mode the System-on-Chip’s are expected to consume just 0.3 watts of power.

ARM processors are now looking likely to capture an ever increasing share of the processor market as it targets all platforms from mobile phones to servers. Analysts firm IDC is already predicting that the company, which has barely any market share in the PC processor market, is likely to claim as much as 15% of this market by 2015.

At present the processor market is dominated by Intel and AMD but this is likely to change as ultra-portables such as tablet PCs become increasingly popular. ARM will also likely get a healthy boost when Microsoft releases Windows 8, the first Windows release to support ARM architectures.