Networking chipset vendors including Broadcom, Cavium and Applied Micro Circuit (AMCC) have taken the initiative to replace PowerPC and MIPS architectures with ARM's for developments of server processor solutions for new networking communication equipment, including SDN (software-defined networking) and NFV (network functions virtualization) devices, according to Digitimes Research.
Since ARM-based architecture sports a number of features including power-saving, highly integration and scalability for multi-core operations which are in line with the development trends for cloud computing, networking chipset vendors are also likely to develop ARM-based chips for micro servers.
Meanwhile, the popularity of the OpenPOWER architecture launched by IBM in 2013, which is similar to Sun Microsystems's OpenSPARC, is expected to ebb further despite the support from Google, Digitimes Research asserted.