Qualcomm Launches the First Server Processor to Challenge Intel

Qualcomm Launches the First Server Processor to Challenge Intel
According to foreign reports, Qualcomm, which has always focused on expanding beyond the mobile processor market, launched a 24 core server processor on Thursday. This will be the first attack on the server processor market dominated by Intel.
Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president of Qualcomm, said at the press conference held in San Francisco that this server processor independently developed by Qualcomm uses a 24 core design. The product is currently in the pilot production stage, and the company's potential customers and partners can test it.
Qualcomm is currently trying to promote this product to Google (Weibo), Amazon and other big data center operators that provide cloud computing services, making it an alternative to Intel processors. Chandrasek said that these enterprises have independently developed servers and run independently developed software, which makes them natural sellers of Qualcomm server processors. In addition, orders from these enterprises account for a large part of the server processor market.
Chandrasek said, "For these enterprises, there is really no real alternative product in the market at present. Now is the best time for us to enter the server processor market."
cooperative partner
Qualcomm also announced an alliance with chip manufacturers Xilinx and Mellanox. Qualcomm expects that by 2020, new markets are expected to bring $15 billion to the company.
Although Qualcomm has always excluded Intel from the mobile phone chip market, the company is facing competitive pressures from MediaTek, Apple, Samsung Electronics and some small chip manufacturers in China. Qualcomm's performance this year may decline for the first time since 2009. Under the leadership of CEO Steve Mollenkopf, Qualcomm began to expand beyond its mobile phone chip business to help the company continue to grow. Morenkov previously said that Qualcomm's mobile chips are applicable to all products from cars to servers.
The server processor business is currently Intel's most profitable business. In the second quarter of this year, Intel accounted for 99% of the global server processor market. Companies such as Applied Micro Circuits and AMD have developed server processors based on ARM architecture to try to rewrite Intel's monopoly on the market. The above companies claim that more market options can help Intel customers have more say in product pricing, and ARM based products are more energy efficient and cheaper.
Long term efforts
Derek Aberle, president of Qualcomm, said in the press conference on Thursday that Qualcomm promised to invest more money in the server processor business, and it will take some time to understand its return on investment. He said, "It may take many years for such a major investment to show us some output. We believe that we are one of the few companies that can enter the server processor market and launch products."
The revenue of Intel's data center department in the second quarter was 3.85 billion US dollars, accounting for 29% of the company's total revenue; However, the division contributed 64% to Intel's overall operating profit.
Qualcomm shares rose 1.9% to close at $57.66 in regular trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Thursday. Since this year, Qualcomm's share price has dropped by 22%.