After acquiring Nuvia, Qualcomm initially ruled out a server CPU, even though Nuvia had explicitly developed in exactly this direction. Now the project could develop again, because the market for alternative solutions is growing and Qualcomm wants to build more than just smartphone SoCs and modems.
Qualcomm wants to be more than smartphone chips and modems
Qualcomm wants a broader portfolio for the future, not just for modems and smartphone chips and their modifications and licenses in other areas. That is why the group has recently been steadily setting foot in the automotive direction, but with only around 3 percent of sales, it is still a very small light. Now a story that has actually been buried for the time being could be dug up again: processors for the high-end segment.
Many failures for Qualcomm
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Qualcomm's history for server processors is one of failure. Planned in 2014, Qualcomm wanted to get involved in the server market with its own ARM processors from 2017. In 2016, a 48-core model was presented with the Centriq 2400, which should be on the market by 2018 at the latest. But it never really came onto the market and successors were stamped out straight away. In 2018, the quasi closure of the division and the departure of the boss followed, although Qualcomm always emphasized that the area would be continued – with 50 of the formerly over 1,000 people at the end of the year. Because ARM in the server didn't work, not even ARM in the notebook went smoothly with Qualcomm at the beginning.
After taking over the CPU start-up Nuvia, Qualcomm therefore closed a deal own server chip first of all categorically. One wanted to offer the developments of Nuvia to other companies, it was said about a year ago. According to the plan, these could also develop processors that are suitable for cloud servers.
Now Qualcomm seems to have recognized that the technologies are suitable for more, than just selling them, after all Nuvia is working on a server processor until the takeover. Amazon, Microsoft and Google sometimes build their own chips with great success, but also buy from almost all suppliers of CPUs and GPUs, the market can use very different solutions for different areas. There would definitely be a niche for Qualcomm here, and Ampere Computing recently showed that it can work. What Qualcomm will ultimately build is currently still unknown.