Arm VS x86 in the Data Centre Space - What are Arm's CEO thoughts?

The CTO Guide was present at Arm's COMPUTEX Taipei APAC Media Q&A.

With the growing AI landscape and huge market opportunities within the data centre space, we were curious on Arm's directions and how they plan to compete in that space. Judging that data centres are still largely dominated by x86 processors, does Arm still have a game in it?

Here's how our QnA went:

Zhi Cheng (CTO Guide):

What are your thoughts of the Arm architecture based products in the data centre space, and where do you see yourself in terms of competition with x86 products in the market?

Rene Haas (CEO, Arm) :

I believe that in the data centre space, there's only us and x86. There's no other choices. Arm has been working with data centre customers since 2009, and it has been a long journey to get us where we are now.

I think what you are seeing on why we are growing so quickly in the data centre is because all the software is taken care of. So there isn't anything missing in the software standpoint, particularly with native applications that can't run on Arm. This is why you can see cloud service providers like Microsoft, Amazon and Google move over there.

As Data Centre applications are starting to become AI Factories, the CPU that connects to the accelerator, needs to be very power efficient. It is also the reason why NVIDIA has moved away from a standalone Hopper + x86 CPU which runs on x86 to an integrated design like the Grace Hopper or the Grace Blackwell, which are Arm based.

I think there is a macro trend (of Arm being used in data centres). For us, it is getting faster, and I think it's driven by the power efficiency story.

As we move towards the edge, we do expect that the vast majority of the applications running on Arm. That is why even though we are investing a lot into the product story, we are just as much investing into the software eco system story.

Thoughts:

No doubt, there is a trend of many consumer and enterprise products starting to use Arm's IP because of its power efficiency. We've seen Apple moving their whole Macbook product lineup to Arm, and similarly, NVIDIA's servers as well, with the Grace platform. While x86 isn't going anywhere any time soon, Arm has got it place in the market, as companies take their IP to bring it to the market with different products and solutions.

Perhaps, that is also Microsoft and many consumer electronic brands are also bringing Arm based personal computers to the market, with Arm based Windows systems. It seems like it's a stepping stone for Arm to reach deeper into the markets, trying to take a pie from the dominant x86 force.