Based on this blog, it appears Cavium has better chance than others ARM device makers for servers etc.
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Cavium: Bulls Pleased by ‘ThunderX’ Challenge to Intel in Data Center
By Tiernan Ray
Shares of chip maker Cavium (CAVM) are down $1.01, or 2%, at $47.40, despite the company this morning announcing a family of processors, called “ThunderX,” aimed at equipment for storage and networking in a variety of contexts.
Cavium claims the chips are “game changing,” combining 48 CPU “cores” on chip, in what it says are the “world’s highest performing low-power 64-bit ARMv8 SoC family of workload optimized processors.” The chips will sample to customers in Q4 of this year, Cavium said.
Cavium is among one of many hopefuls in the chip market hoping to use technology from ARM Holdings (ARMH) to challenge the server and networking empire of Intel (INTC), with other challengers including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Applied Micro Circuits (AMCC).
Anil Doradla of William Blair, who has an Outperform rating on the shares, writes that “What surprised us the most from the announcement was the company’s strategy.”
“While we, like many investors, expected the announcement to be centered on server applications, the company surprised us with multiple product categories targeting the storage (ThunderX ST), networking (ThunderX NT), and security (ThunderX SC) applications.”
Doradla believes “Cavium is taking the battle to the doorstep of Intel and its Xeon processor family,” adding “we are incrementally bullish on Cavium’s prospects and believe no other processor vendor has announced such capabilities with ARM.”
Rick Schafer of Oppenheimer & Co., who has an Outperform rating on the shares, does, indeed, appear to believe it’s “game changing”:
Given the booming demand for power- and cost-efficient cloud and data center processors, we believe ThunderX could be a game-changing, disruptive technology that positions CAVM well as a portion of the data center market migrates toward ARM-based systems. We see CAVM with ThunderX as the best- positioned ARM vendor to capitalize on this opportunity to date.
Schafer quotes an endorsement from Linley Gwennap, publisher of the venerable Microprocessor Report:
ThunderX also received a key endorsement from processor expert Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group. Gwennap said, “ThunderX will enable Cavium to be the first ARM-based vendor to deliver the performance and features required by today’s volume server market at half the power and significantly lower cost compared to competing solutions.”
