Marvell: ARM 40 nm processors soon to be available for servers

While we knew that ARM was looking to get their processor architecture into servers, we didn’t know who their clients were. The chip set manufacturer Marvell will be one of the first, as they are currently preparing a dedicated processor burned in the 40 nm range.

A few weeks back, the president of ARM Holdings confirmed that processors using their architecture, aimed at servers were being prepared. With their processors architecture usually aimed at mobile products, the company was looking to break out, although no client names were provided.

Chipset manufacturer Marvell Technology has now announced that they are preparing quad-core processors with burning at 40 nm which will directly take on the x86 products released by Intel by emphasising lower energy consumption.


Unblocking the ARM architecture
Marvell has promised a processor which uses 5 times less energy than x86 processors. The chip set manufacturer has, in partnership with ARM, developed a prototype Web server based on a dual core Marvell ARM processor which can currently be found in one of their ranges.

The first SoC’s (System on a Chip) aimed at professional use should be available by the end of the year. The main difference with the Intel processors will be the price, as Marvell processors of this kind will only cost 35 each, whereas Intel Xeon processors retail for a few hundred dollars.

For ARM, this is also a good deal as these new processors will be sold at a higher price than those used in mobile phones. Other chipset manufacturers may also start to look at similar projects later in the year.

Marvell, in developing these new processors, are putting to work the resources acquired through the  purchase of Intel’s XScale mobile processors division (purchased in 2006), based on ARM, with the aim being to offer this architecture outside of the mobile telephone field.