As the consumer market enters the cold winter, the global demand for consumer electronics such as smartphones and PCs has also entered a downward cycle, and servers have become one of the core driving forces of semiconductors. As a global IP leader, Arm is also accelerating its deployment in the server field. On September 15, in response to demand, Arm announced the launch of its next-generation data center chip technology, Neoverse V2. 1Arm's Server Road PC and server are two major application scenarios of CPU. Although they are both called CPU, technically speaking, there is still a clear difference between the CPU of PC and the CPU of server. From the perspective of micro-architecture, the processing scale of PC CPUs is small, and linear expansion is easy to do. However, cloud computing scenarios require the integration of a large number of computing units. Large-scale concurrent resource conflicts and performance bottlenecks are problems that must be solved. The problem of multi-core linearity, and the problem of architectural flexibility caused by complex and changeable application scenarios, etc. For a long time, the x86 architecture has been the protagonist of the server market, mainly due to the natural performance advantages of the x86 architecture, as well as the advantages of software and ecosystems accumulated for a long time. Arm has also entered the server field since 2008. Not only did Marvell act as a pioneer, but also brought AMD from the x86 camp as its platform. Qualcomm also participated. However, due to performance and ecological issues, Arm has not made a big breakthrough in the server market. . But in recent years, Arm has been sprinting again. In October 2018, Arm strategically separated the client chip design from the server chip design for the first time, starting from the core and redesigning the functions necessary for server workloads, L2 caches and mesh interconnects to tie them together. The formation of the core complex drove the launch of Neoverse. The Neoverse reference architecture allows chip designers to plug in their choice of DDR memory, PCI-Express peripherals and network interface controllers, greatly reducing the risk of creating server chip designs while retaining flexibility. In September 2020, Arm derived three more series on the Neoverse platform, namely the E series with low power consumption and small area, the N series with maximum PPA, and the V series with the highest performance. Recently, Arm introduced the NeoverseV2 platform (codenamed "Demeter"), which is equipped with the latest V-Series cores and the industry's widely deployed Arm CMN-700mesh interconnect technology. Will deliver market-leading integer performance for cloud and HPC workloads and introduce several Armv9 architecture security enhancements. NVIDIA is currently using Neoverse V2 as the computing base for its Grace data center CPUs. 2 Qualcomm's server dream In 2017, Qualcomm launched the server chip "Centrq 2400" based on the Arm architecture and manufactured by Samsung's 10nm process. At the time, Qualcomm claimed that the Centrq 2400 was superior to Intel's Xeon Platinum 8180 processor from a power efficiency and cost perspective. At the press conference, potential customers such as Microsoft took the stage to express their interest in the product. But after Broadcom offered to buy Qualcomm for $103 billion, the crisis-hit Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said on a conference call that Qualcomm was focused on cutting spending in "non-core business" areas. . In addition, Intel itself has a market share of more than 90% in the server field, and at this time the entire Arm ecosystem and software are still underdeveloped. Although Qualcomm has not clearly announced its withdrawal from the Arm server chip market, there is not much new progress in the follow-up. . According to foreign media reports, Qualcomm intends to return to the Arm server chip market, and Qualcomm is currently looking for customers for a new product, which was launched in early 2021 after Qualcomm acquired chip startup Nuvia. Amazon-owned cloud solutions provider AWS, one of the biggest buyers of server chips, is already considering Qualcomm's products. However, Qualcomm and Arm are currently in court due to patent issues. 3 new growth points In the past two years or so, due to the impact of the epidemic, the large-scale spread of online office, coupled with the continuous increase in the penetration rate of 5G mobile phones, Qualcomm's revenue has continued to rise. Net profit was $9 billion, up 74% year-on-year. After entering this year, due to the downward pressure on consumer demand, the prosperity of consumer electronics and smartphones is also declining, which directly affects the shipments of mobile phone manufacturers and mobile phone chips. According to TrendForce's forecast in May, the forecast for smartphone production in 2022 was further revised down to 1.333 billion units, and there is still room for further reductions. According to Qualcomm's latest revenue data, its revenue in the third fiscal quarter was $10.928 billion, an increase of 37%, net profit was $3.73 billion, an increase of 84%, and revenue from mobile phone chips was $6.149 billion. An increase of 59%. Although the revenue situation in this fiscal quarter is optimistic, in the forecast for the next fiscal quarter, Qualcomm stated that the revenue of the mobile phone business may slow down. The transition stage, as well as the termination of smartphone brands' shipments to Russia caused by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, etc. Image credit: Global Semiconductor Watch tabulation Smartphone growth has stagnated. For Qualcomm, a new growth engine is needed, and the server market is an opportunity, especially in recent years, the server market is changing. 4 New changes in the server market According to research data from TrendForce, the global server shipments in the third quarter are expected to increase by 6.5% quarter-on-quarter, mainly due to the continued support of the demand momentum of enterprises to accelerate cloud migration after the epidemic. Machine shipments will grow 5.1%. Specific to different architectures, TrendForce predicts that the penetration rate of Arm architecture processors in the server market will reach 22% by 2025. There are three main reasons. First, it can support the diverse and rapidly changing workloads of the data center, and has better scalability and cost performance. Second, it provides higher customization for different niche markets, and the ecosystem is more flexible. Third, the volume is relatively small, which meets the needs of today's micro data centers. As the world's largest cloud infrastructure service provider, AWS has deployed 15% of servers based on Arm architecture in the past year, and it is expected that this proportion will exceed 20% in 2022. 5 Domestic players Domestic server chips are ushering in rapid development. In the x86 camp, Haiguang Information's server chips have been commercialized on a large scale, and Arm-based server chips have also achieved fruitful results. In the field of Arm server chips, the main domestic players are Huawei, Feiteng and Ali. As a leader in the domestic semiconductor industry, Huawei released the Kunpeng 920 processor in January 2019. The chip is compatible with the Arm architecture and is manufactured using a 7nm process. It can support 32/48/64 cores, the main frequency can reach 2.6GHz, and it supports 8 channels. DDR4, PCIe4.0 and 100GRoCE network. At present, Huawei's Kunpeng chips have been used in servers purchased by banks and operators. Taking China Mobile's server tender in February this year as an example, the six major equipment manufacturers based on Huawei's Kunpeng server chips won the bid for 1.65 billion yuan. In addition, servers equipped with the Kunpeng 920 chip have also entered China Telecom's winning bid list. Ali also released an Arm-based server chip "Yitian 710" last year. This chip is a server chip made by TSMC's 5nm process technology. It is known as the most powerful Arm server chip in the industry, with performance exceeding the industry standard by at least 20% and energy efficiency. Compared with the increase of more than 50%, but this chip is not currently for sale, mainly for Alibaba Cloud's own use. In addition to Huawei and Ali, Feiteng is also actively deploying the Arm server chip market. Like Huawei, Feiteng has obtained the Arm v8 permanent license and launched the "Tengyun S series", which is aimed at the field of high-performance server products, providing strong computing power and high concurrent computing power for server and data center applications. In 2016, it released the FT-2000/64 high-performance server CPU. In July 2020, Feiteng released the Feiteng Cloud S 2500 new generation of high-performance and scalable multi-socket server CPU. 6 Summary Judging from the current trend, with the increase in global data volume, the server track will become more and more popular. Although x86 has outstanding performance and ecology, the patents of x86 are mainly in the hands of Intel and AMD. A company has begun to authorize externally, but its authorization is not on the same level as Arm. Today, in the Arm camp, more and more companies have begun to set foot in the server market. The underlying design and ecology are being established in an orderly manner. In recent years, they have achieved a certain market share. Under the rapid growth of the overall market, it is not ruled out that there will be More companies are coming in.