There are rumours that Qualcomm is thinking about coming back to the server market after a few years away. If this happens, the server market could change a lot.
Sources told Bloomberg that the San Diego-based company, which is best known for its Snapdragon smartphone processors, is going to compete with companies like Intel and AMD for a piece of the $1 billion market.
According to the sources, Qualcomm has already signed up Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a possible customer. It implies that it would be a huge win for the company.
Qualcomm hasn’t commented on Bloomberg’s report, but the move has been suspected since its $1.4 billion purchase of semiconductor firm Nuvia in January 2021.
Nuvia, formed by two former top Apple engineers who worked on bespoke ARM CPU development for the latest MacBooks and iPhones, builds high-performance, low-power server processors.
Qualcomm abandoned the server industry in 2018 after a rough year.
It began marketing the Arm-based Centriq 2400 server CPU in November 2017. But halted sales after a key executive left and to focus on its smartphone business.
Qualcomm’s probable entry into the lucrative server sector comes as industry heavyweights battle start-ups and smaller companies.
Moreover, recent numbers show AMD is making great progress in the market, marking its 13th straight period of growth.
Intel’s next-generation processors, codenamed Sapphire Rapids, have been delayed many times and are presently anticipated in Q1 2023.
Arm’s new Neoverse platform is generating waves in the server market, challenging Intel’s x86 architecture.