The same day that Intel announced the Xeon processor D-1500 family, ARM said it was targeting 25 percent market share in servers by 2020.
The Intel Xeon processor D-1500 family are the first Xeon class processors with integrated networking, something customers have been asking for, and was already available in competing ARM based solutions. The 14nm devices build on the architecture developed for the Intel Atom processor C2750, replacing the Atom cores with four, six or eight Xeon cores running up to 2.4 GHz.
The Intel Xeon processor D-1500 family is targeted at applications in communication service provider, enterprise IT, and cloud service provider data center and network edge. Devices have already been integrated into a number of network appliance platforms and other systems.
These new Intel processors go head-to-head against ARMv8 based processors from AMD, Applied Micro, Broadcom, Cavium, HiSilicon, Phytium, Qualcomm and others. ARM believes these devices offer a wide range of performance and other benefits over Intel solutions and will be widely adopted.
The key for ARM is continuing to develop the ecosystem through initiatives like Linaro and OpenDataPlane and creating opportunities for ARM based servers and other platforms. ARM has made a good start but 25 percent market share by 2020 is a big hill to climb even this many partners. Intel meanwhile will continue developing more integrated solutions with 12 and 16 core Intel Xeon processors D-1500 expected in Q1 2016.
For additional background see:
SDN/NFV Pushes the Boundaries for Multicore Processors
Intel Aims Xeon at Data Centers