With more data center services and cloud solutions have been created on the way, experts are concerned that electricity consumption inside the massive data centers that power the internet and different enterprise server applications. In fact, a survey report of data centers today highlighted it consumes about 2% of the world's electricity production, and increased 7% in 2013 compared to 2012. Data center owners and operators have faced increasing electricity bills and taxes while increasing hardware density and, at the same time, maintain or improve the user experience.
In recent years, several server solution providers have worked to create a new 64-bit ARM-based single chip solution driven by lowed power consumption and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) not unlike the one in current Smartphone. Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, a NASDAQ-listed fabless semiconductor company producing computing and connectivity IC chips, has built brand new flagship server chips X-Gene product lines and the ecosystem. It has made it clear they intend to watch the market developed formany years and witnessed not only how data center demands has developed, but also how companies compete amid increased competition in current hyperscale challenges.
X-Gene chips promise to significantly reduce the power consumed by the modern server, and that's certainly an attractive prospect for Facebook and other cloud service companies that now run their web services atop tens of thousands of servers.
To understand how the server industry is developing in the ARM-based 64-bit sector, Digitimes invites Dr. Paramesh Gopi, the CEO of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, to learn how the company is reacting to such developments and what kind of strategies are helping the company maintain a competitive edge and his outlook for the company.
Q: What are the major products or solutions in 2014?
A: Our major launch this year is X-Gene, which is the product of our core competencies of 1) brawny 64-bit server processor design, 2) high-speed mixed-signal I/O heritage, 3) broad, fast memory IP, and 4) our ability to integrate all of the above on a single piece of silicon. We also have a family of Connectivity products named X-Weave, that are ideally suited to address the growing need for high-speed, high-reliability communication within and between data centers.
Q: From solution point of view, what would be the future trends of data center industry? Why and how things going for the direction?
A: First, we see continued growth of the cloud. There will be multiple drivers of this growth: new software applications, more streaming video, more mobile services, more connected devices, i.e., the internet of things, and more enterprise services migrating to cloud. Some of the drivers may emerge more quickly or more strongly than others, but given demand coming from multiple directions, we see demand for cloud services only going up.
Second, we see a trend toward driving down server infrastructure costs. We have observed this trend for some time, and we expect it to continue. Innovative new thinking and highly disruptive technologies such as X-Gene will enable this. Specifically, we expect to see higher densities, lower total cost of ownership, and an overall decline in the growth rate on energy consumption by data centers with the adoption of new technologies, like X-Gene.
We see software-driven equipment malleability (i.e., software-based reallocation of computing, networking, and storage resources), lower cost open hardware following the massive adoption of open software, and a growing market for ODMs as demand from the cloud continues to drive the white box opportunity, which is particularly relevant in Taiwan.
Q: What are the new products or solutions you are going to demonstrate in COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2014 this year? Can you share your views about the business outlook for 2014?
A: We are very excited and proud to be demonstrating the great strides we've made in terms of our progress relating to production silicon and the ecosystem development this year at COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2014. We will be showcasing the following:
The ARMv8 software ecosystem has come a long way over the last several years and now enjoys the full commitment of leading providers Microsoft, Red Hat, Canonical, Oracle and Citrix, along with open source stalwarts OpenStack, OpenJDK, KVM and others.
Applied Micro is proud to be participating with Canonical on their Ubuntu OpenStack Interoperability Lab. OIL makes it easier for ecosystem partners like Applied Micro to assure the compatibility of our category-defining X-Gene Server of a Chip with the world's leading open cloud platform.
Applied Micro and Canonical will also show Ubuntu 14.04LTS running on a 14U rack composed of 1U X-Gene Servers, using Juju, MAAS and charms to orchestrate applications, databases and services. This demonstration will provide proof that Applied Micro's X-Gene, the first (and in all likelihood the only) ARMv8 Server on a Chip product to launch in 2014, will be supported by the dominant open source cloud software framework - on an equal footing with x86-64 and POWER architectures.
We have also invited several of our ODM partners to showcase their new and developing products based on X-Gene.
Q: Besides COMPUTEX, is there any marketing or product promotion plans in this year?
A: Certainly. One that I would highlight in the near-term is the International Supercomputing Conference, or ISC, later this month. Many people might not assume that an ARM-based server processor would be an obvious fit for the high performance market, but the interest and success we're seeing from the high performance community is a testament to the performance of our custom cores and the integrated high-performance analog and mixed signal I/O that X-Gene brings to the market. We are very excited about the breadth of applications for which X-Gene is uniquely suited.
It's also quite reasonable to assume that there will be a campaign, perhaps in conjunction with customers and/or ecosystem partners to highlight availability of production units when the timing is appropriate later this year.
Q: Is there a successful story sharing to us about your customers to use your products or solutions?
A: We have nearly one hundred formal evaluation and use agreements signed by customers, potential customers, ecosystem partners, and the like. Since we have been sampling silicon for over a year now, there has been a tremendous amount of interest and effort in working on and evaluating X-Gene. I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, people are amazed by 1) the total cost of ownership, or TCO savings, 2) the high performance / low-power profile, 3) the range of applications X-Gene addresses, 4) the ease and speed of which software can be ported to X-Gene, and 5) our ability to deliver on what we promised.
Q: Any message for Global IT Industry?
A: The world has changed. The advent of Open Source, or LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) has set in motion an irreversible trend. No longer is there a need or justification for architectural monopolies and duopolies. In X-Gene we have created not just a viable alternative, but we have, in many ways created a superior product from a TCO and systems perspective.
Dr. Paramesh Gopi, CEO of Applied Micro Circuits Corporation