Through its Graviton server chips, AWS is leading the way when it comes to cloud computing providers adoption of Arm-based processors according to a new report from the market research firm TrendForce.
As corporate demand for digital transformation including AI and high-performance computing has accelerated in recent years, this has led to increased adoption of cloud computing services. In order to improve service flexibility, cloud service providers have begun introducing Arm-based servers and TrendForce believes Arm architecture in data center servers will reach 22 percent by 2025.
As companies have begun to diversify their cloud workloads over the past few years, the market has started paying more attention to the benefits Arm architecture processing can provide to data centers.
In its report, TrendForce explained that Arm-based processors have three major advantages. They can support diverse and rapidly changing workloads at scale while being cost-effective, they provide higher customization for a variety of niche markets with a more flexible ecosystem and their physical footprint is relatively small which makes them ideal for today's micro data centers.
Following AWS' lead
Due to today's geopolitical situation and the increased need for data sovereignty in various countries, the top cloud service providers and telecoms are actively developing micro data centers which will lead to further adoption of Arm-based processors.
At the same time, AWS' Graviton chips have the largest market share and began to chip away at x86's dominance in the server market last year. TrendForce also noted that AWS' deployment of Arm-based processors reached 15 percent of its overall server deployment in 2021 though this figure is expected to exceed 20 percent this year.
As such, other major cloud service providers will need to initiate their own Arm-based server projects at various foundries in order to keep up with AWS. If testing goes as planed, these projects will likely begin being deployed en masse in 2025.
Additionally, Arm's own Platform Roadmap for Neoverse will be one of the key drivers of penetration. While the chip designer's product line is set to target ultra-large-scale data centers and edge computing infrastructure, it will still take some time for Arm-based servers to find their way into enterprise data centers. This is why TrendForce believes that Arm-based servers likely won't be able to compete with traditional x86-based servers before 2025.
