Amazon Enters Chip Business with ARM Platform
Amazon.com crashed the semiconductor sector this week, announcing that its Annapurna Labs Inc. subsidiary would offer an ARM-based platform-on-a-chip targeting network-attached storage and networking applications.
The new chips dubbed Alpine are based on 32-bit ARMv7 and 64-bit ARMv8 architectures. While the new chips are aimed primary at home gateways and Wi-Fi routers, the leading public cloud provider also said Alpine would provide secure storage, application virtualization, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud applications.
Among the features of the new ARM-based chips are improved cloud connectivity and management of IoT applications. The former would boost Amazon Web Services' (AWS) public cloud business while the IoT feature represents an attempt to begin fleshing-out a projected network of connected sensors and devices.
Amazon touted the Alpine platform as helping service providers and manufacturers boost performance by providing up to four cores of high-end computing power, storage interfaces, third-generation PCIe interfaces and up to 10G of network connectivity. The ARM chips also include features like DDR4 memory and 2 Mb of cache memory. That, the retailer claims, would eliminate the need for hardware acceleration or software optimization to meet growing performance requirements.
Amazon acquired Israel-based Annapurna Labs in January 2015, reportedly paying in the range of $350 million to $370 million. The AWS unit has operations in San Jose, Calif.
Annapurna listed several manufacturers who are designing networking and storage products based on its ARM-based technology, including Asustek Computer Inc. (TPE: 2357), Netgear Inc. (NASDAQ: NTGR), QNAP Systems and Synology America Corp.
Network-attached storage specialist QNAP said it is currently using dual- and quad-core Alpine processors in its line of NAS products. Among other storage products, the Taiwanese manufacturer said it has launched two- and four-bay NAS products that support Docker and other Linux application container virtualization. The company added that it plans to continue working with Annapurna Labs to expand its storage product line in 2016.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) said Wednesday (Jan. 6) that several Alpine-based products are available now (but not yet on the retailers' main website) and that Annapurna Labs would make Alpine chips available to service providers and manufacturers.
While not yet a full-fledged chip industry trend, more U.S. companies are beginning to offer chips under their own brand names. Along with Amazon, chip intellectual property vendor Rambus Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBS) moved last year to begin offering memory chips.
Whether Amazon's embrace of ARM microprocessor technology puts a dent in Intel Corp.'s (NASDAQ: INTC) dominance of the server chip market remains to be seen. Thus far, ARM has made few inroads in the server market largely based on Intel's x86 architecture. Still, backing from a retail and cloud giant like Amazon.com at least gives ARM a leg up in expanding the dominance of AWS in the public cloud market.
