The bulk of the server growth happens in cloud services and companies like Google can probably figure out to parallel process most of the stuff they do. They’ll still have the Intel processors where those are required but to serve most other things, such as serve web pages, serve data, grid compute, the ARM servers can save Google 10x the power consumption in their data centers which is currently their biggest cost.

HP Redstone servers will be even more interesting forthcoming years with RRAM memories like HP Labs developed Memristor or Unisemi and some other RRAM memory developed technologies.

HP Labs Memristor uses TiO2=Titanium-Oxide in theirs knots or memory nodes, on youtube you can find some interesting lectures about RRAM memories even Stan Williams who is HP Labs manager for the development of the Memristor.

Stan Williams present the facts of the Memristor that in writes in 2ns and HP Labs have developed Memristor in up to 8 layers but they think that it cvan be possible to develope Memristors up to 1000 layers.
But how will it be possible to make Memristors in 1000 layers, will the wafer be in the fab for a week?!

On eetimes dot com in their recently artik´ckle about fortcoming RRAM memories they say that Samsung have also developed RRAM memories and Samsung say that RRAM memories will be able to fix 1 Trillion write-cycles to compete with mlc0multi-layer-cell in todays Nand Flash memories that fix only 1 million write-cycles.

Stan Williams say in one of the videos on youtube that Memristor will last for beyond 10 years.

Memristor and other RRAM memories tech memories with the memory nodes change from amorphus state to crystalline in different levels where the current changes from amorphus or crystalline or crystalline to amorphus state (if you erase).

In July I read on engadget dot com that IBM Research Lab in Zürich announced that the think that RRAM memories will outcompete both HDD and Nand Flash memories in 2016.

RRAM memories will be msch more cheap in larger volymes forthcoming years because RRAM tech is much easier to make in the Fabs than Nand Flash memories.

Yup, I wonder how many % of Google’s servers could run ARM now, in the next few months and not before 64-bit etc is ready. Not knowing much about how Google programs their servers to provide search, youtube on-demand streaming, google+ real-time AJAXified stuff, Google Docs and Apps for enterprise, Google App Engine, my guess is Google can maybe find a way to have a big chunk of that run on these current ARM Cortex-A9 servers now already, or that it wouldn’t take their programmers many months to port things over so they can run those there. It’s a big deal for them if they can do it. Basically server power consumption and cooling is probably one of the biggest expenses for Google today, other than salaries, buildings and acquisitions like Motorola etc. The growth of Google sites like YouTube, Google+, Google Docs, Google App Engine, is fenomenal, and if they can run things with 10x less power consumption, using ARM in their servers would be their biggest priority right now. And I’d guess Google might be one of Intel’s biggest server customers today. So if from one day to the next, Google finds a way to replace 25%, 50% or more of their Intel powered servers with ARM, that would be very disruptive.

My guess is maybe Google can find out a way to still use Intel for where they do need higher performance, and use ARM everywhere else, and thus within their server infrastructure, combine those automatically and get the most out of each of them.

Definitely good news for ARM to get larger share of the server market, and brings some much needed competition to the market, but still a bit premature to be calling Winners and Losers.

ARM still has to develop higher performing solutions for applications that don’t rely on parallel computing, ARM is still a few more years away from getting 64bit to market to be applicable for a wider range of uses, and ARM still has to contend with the lack of legacy support and whether MS will provide full support that will effect how easy it would be for companies to make the switch.

All in addition to possible “incentives” and other challenges Intel may come up with…  Though Intel should definitely be worried.