Qualcomm is taking another run at the market for server processors, according to people familiar with its plans, betting it can tap a fast-growing industry and decrease its reliance on smartphones.
The company is seeking customers for a product stemming from last year’s purchase of chip start-up Nuvia, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Amazon.com’s AWS business, one of the biggest server chip buyers, has agreed to take a look at Qualcomm’s offerings, they said.
Representatives for Qualcomm and Amazon declined to comment.
Qualcomm gained as much as 2.9% to US$152.91 in New York trading. The shares had been down 19% this year to Wednesday, part of a broader slide for chip stocks.
CEO Cristiano Amon is trying to turn Qualcomm into a broader provider of semiconductors, rather than just the top maker of smartphone chips. But an earlier push into the server market was abandoned four years ago under his predecessor. At the time, the company was trying to cut costs and placate investors after fending off a hostile takeover by Broadcom.
This time around, Qualcomm has Nuvia, staffed with chip designers from companies such as Apple. Amon, who acquired the business for about $1.4-billion in 2021, has said that its work will help revitalise Qualcomm’s high-end offerings for smartphones. But Nuvia was founded as a provider of technology for the server industry.
The market for cloud computing infrastructure — the kind of equipment that Amazon, Google and Microsoft use to whisk data around the world — generated $73.9-billion last year, according to research firm IDC. That was up 8.8% from 2020.
The owners of giant cloud data centres have long relied on Intel’s chip technology for their servers. But they’re increasingly embracing processors that use designs from ARM, a key partner in phone chips for San Diego, US-based Qualcomm.
Dominant in phones
ARM designs are already dominant in mobile phones, where they’re prized for not draining battery life. Now power consumption has become a more pressing issue in the data centre world as well. As server farms spread — and suck up staggering amounts of electricity — companies want more efficient chips.
Amazon has addressed this need by building its own chips based on ARM designs. The e-commerce giant has created multiple generations of its Graviton processor line and touts its performance to customers.
Read: MediaTek to challenge Qualcomm in premium Android phone market
But Amazon also still uses chips from Intel, AMD and Nvidia — and Qualcomm sees an opportunity to carve out a niche among those suppliers.
The last time it made such an attempt was 2017, when Qualcomm began selling an ARM-based server chip called the Centriq 2400. It relied on Samsung Electronics to manufacture the products and said they outperformed Intel’s Xeon processors in energy efficiency and cost. At the public introduction of the server chip line in November of that year, potential customers such as Microsoft took to the stage to voice their interest in the offering.
For Qualcomm, a successful push into server chips would mean it has a much bigger-ticket item to sell
But less than a year later, the company’s leadership began shutting down the project. Former Intel executive Anand Chandrasekher, who had led the effort, left Qualcomm.
For Intel, Qualcomm’s latest move would bring yet more competition to an industry it once dominated. The company has been racing to bolster its technology and manufacturing after losing market share to AMD and homegrown chips like Amazon’s.
For Qualcomm, a successful push into server chips would mean it has a much bigger-ticket item to sell. The company’s phone offerings are typically priced in the tens of dollars. Server processors can cost hundreds of dollars. — (c) 2022 Bloomberg LP
