Qualcomm hires former head of CPU architecture for Intel servers

Qualcomm reportedly hired Intel’s chief architect for Xeon CPUs, Sailesh Kottapalliwho will be the senior vice president at his new place of work and will be responsible for Qualcomm’s next big project.

It appears that the company has decided to expand into a new segment of the CPU market after a relatively decent start with its “Snapdragon X Elite” mobile SoCs. The San Diego chipmaker has revealed intentions to explore new business opportunities in the past.

And, it seems, CPUs for servers will be the company’s next target.

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Available Information

Recently in a job listing, Qualcomm was looking for a “SoC Security Architect for Servers”stating that the contractor would be part of the company’s data center team.

The position validates that the chipmaker is working in this specific segment. Below, the most important part of the description that reveals what you can expect from Qualcomm server CPUs:

“Our focus is to develop reference platforms based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoC, offering a comprehensive solution that includes hardware, software, reference designs, user guides, SDKs and more.”

Determined Competition

With Qualcomm hiring a key member of Intel’s Xeon team, the company is certainly determined to compete in this segmentimmediately following market competitors.

Qualcomm’s server CPUs are expected to employ Nuvia’s HPC-specific cores, as disclosed last year in a court filing. Given that Nuvia x Qualcomm initially intended to launch server CPUs before the Snapdragon X Elite series, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that development is already underway.

Another interesting point about Qualcomm’s server CPU ambitions is that this could be one of the first mainstream ARM-based solutions for the data center markets, given that x86 has dominated with options from AMD and Intel.

There are projects such as Amazon and Ampere Computing’s Graviton processors, but they have not yet gained prominence in the market. Considering how Qualcomm successfully ran “Windows on ARM,” one can expect the same with its future server CPUs.

Qualcomm has launched CPUs for servers in the past, under the “Centriq” line in 2016, and although the CPUs have gained great prominence in the market, the manufacturer has failed to meet expectations. The problems were limited software support with ARM-based solutions and the domination of x86 at the time.

If Qualcomm plans to succeed, it needs to get it right. And, in this context, it is important that it resolves its dispute with Arm. Even though she has already received a favorable judgment, the process is not over yet.

Fonte: CRN.