Qualcomm to challenge Intel's datacentre and server dominance

The dominance of Intel's products in the server and datacentre market is remarkable, it holds over 95 per cent market share. In the immediate future that's unlikely to change, but over the longer term Qualcomm is aiming to challenge Intel's rule.

Up until now Qualcomm and many other primarily-mobile processor manufacturers have steered clear of the datacentre and server markets; low overall compute performance and a lack of mature 64-bit designs explained this absence. Recently, that has started to change and now Qualcomm is eyeing a possible entry into datacenters and servers over the course of the next two to three years using ARM-powered chips.

Qualcomm's entry into the server market mirrors the situation Intel currently faces trying to forge its way into the mobile market, where Qualcomm holds a similarly-dominant position. At the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, Qualcomm executive chairman, Paul Jacobs, stated that "[Data centers] are built with chipsets basically from one company, Intel, and they are quite high priced and they use tremendous amounts of power...We're going to change that."Qualcomm claims to already be in discussion with possible server customers.