Big iron is out of fashion as server market shifts to low-end single-socket machines

The global market for servers was mostly steady in the second quarter of 2021, according to analyst firm IDC, as the market recovers from 2020's unusual demands. The headline figures of IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker are $23.6 billion and 3.2 million. The former represents Q2 server revenue, a 2.5 per cent year on …

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Blue - down but not out

Big Blue's revenue was down 19.5 per cent year-on-year. Which puts it well ahead of the high-end and mid-range pack which declined by 32.7% and 30.0%, respectively (including IBM). Also, the total revenue of these two segments is $3.7 billion of which IBM contributed $1.2 billion or 32%.

IBM is clearly a niche player in the server market, but it's a solid niche.

[bombastic bob]

up and down trend

AMD seems to have done a fine job at making "something that customers want" inexpensive, and yet perform like something that IS expensive.

At some point trends will probably move around again, but I suspect there will be a need for MORE server-side horsepower SOME day. The trigger COULD be a technological leap in faster internet routing.

The ARM server decline surprises me a bit. Is this because of K8's and cloud? Not enough ARM support?

[man_iii]

Re: up and down trend

I would say that ARM is not well-suited for general-purpose workloads but it is used mostly for lightweight and energy-efficient tasks.

I dont see much beyond AWS A1? Arm servers being used for gp-workloads. That might change if nVidia and INTEL or maybe if AMD decides to do ARM SoC chiplets for their APUs GPGPUs.

ARM in cloud is still very niche.