(iTers News) – ARM Holdings plc’s ambition goes beyond mobile devices. Numbering its Cortex CPU processors from M0 for smart metering to A50 series for data center servers, the Cambridge, U.K.-based processor architecture IP provider is looking wherever low-power budget is in high demand for a next stream of revenue.

Yet, ARM won’t build its vision of ‘ARM processor everywhere’ alone on its own, but on a broad range of partnership in the same way that it has created an entire ecosystem for its mobile processor architecture for smartphone and tablet PCs.

At ARM Technology Symposium 2012 held in Seoul, Ian Drew, executive vice president of marketing and business development wit ARM Holdings said, “We can talk about how low power devices really change the way people consume data. As people consume more data, it needs to be transmitted to the network. So, we need to talk about how low power and intelligent infrastructure work well both in base stations and servers. Transportation and the rest of the industry take about 40% of power usage. About 50% of power generated get lost on the network”.

Added he,” We need to install intelligent devices on the network. If we do all over that, over the next 10 to 15 years, we will be able to become a lot more efficient with all these devices that we use.”

Thanks to ARM’s low power processors, according to him, about 6 billion connected devices are on the Internet, today.

Unfortunately, however, they are squeezing out the network capacity, while dramatically increasing the power budget of the base stations and the data center at the same time..

Furthermore, over the next couple of years, those connected devices will be linked to other local networks like IEEE802.15 ZigBee and sub-GHz to create several trillions of 'the Internet of Things’ devices, according to him.

The explosions in the data traffic will further strain the power consumption as well as the capacity of the network and data center to the limit.

That’s where ARM bets on with its wide range of low power and high-performance CPU professor families.

 64-bit Cortex-A50 in server market

For example, ARM recently unveiled its roadmap to a next generation of 64-bit ARM Cortex-A50 series-A53 and A57.

Due out in late 2013 or early 2014, the 64-bit Cortex A-50 series are what ARM said will be the industry’s lowest power processors ever, which are designed to address a wide range of markets from high-end smartphones to data center servers.

“ARM in the serves is going to happen. We are seeing trial (projects) now and will be seeing l deployments of (ARM servers) next year. We are seeing huge growth in the server industry,” stressed executive vice president Ian Drew.

He said ARM processor showed 70% to 80%, even up to 90% efficiency savings over current infrastructure.

Indeed, the data center server market has undergone drastic changes during the last 20 years, as virtualization has driven up dramatic jumps in power consumption.

To save power budgets, an increasing number of data center servers are being built around multi-core SOCs, because the heterogeneous computing scheme is much easier to control servers and is much more power efficient.

The multi-core SOC’s hardware accelerators of different sizes bring more efficiency both on the networks and servers, too, because it distributes computing resources across a range of applications in a parallel way.

 New game changer

ARM’s current processor core family is a good fit for today's mainstream static web servers, dynamic search engine, and traditional online and offline analytic.

Looking forward, however, ARM gets a 64-bit Cortex-A50 series up its sleeve to meet what a next generation of intensive level of computing server requires.

“We think that unique architecture of SOCs will be designed to make all over the capabilities over the next couple of years, significantly reducing power budgets and significantly improving performances,” emphasized Ian Drew.

“As 64-bit architecture starts to come out in the next couple of years, we will see movements for ARM in this base, we will see dynamic shifts not just in the SOC world, but in power budget, efficiency, space, and how data centers are defined and designed. We think there should be huge opportunities to change amounts of energy consumption. We see huge opportunities outside of smartphone markets for growth, competitive performance and differentiation,“ added he.

To up its ante in the enterprise server market, ARM joined the industry’s non-profit Linaro consortium that is promoting open-source Linux-based server computer OS software.

 Smart grid around ARM core

ARM’s vision doesn’t stop there. The CPU architecture are looking to smart grid market for a next generation of growth engines, trying to build intelligent heating and lighting system and motor control system around ARM cores.

Built with sensors and IEEE902.15 ZigBee, or sub GHz, the smart grid system is where microcontrollers and other RF network processors are prevailing, controlling devices in the grid and enabling them to communicate with each other to save power consumption.

That’s also where ARM’s low-power forte works well, too. ARM unveiled a smart media hub that has ARM’s Cortex-M0 family at its core to control all sensors and other devices in the smart grid.

“We started to work with a couple of companies on how to work efficient and effective street lighting. Intelligent street lighting cut down power usages in a city by 5 to 10%. Power efficiency and intelligence are important. Motors have two modes; on and off. We see huge opportunities in for microcontrollers in the motors. Intelligent heating home is also big area,” said Ian Drew.

According to him, all these area are where low power consumption, reliability and security as well as software and hardware infrastructure matter the most.

All of these are what ARM and ARM’s partners know how to do, he said.

To create a whole ecosystem for the smart grid system, he said ARM is also working together with a number of companies to work out how to connect all devices together and how to connect this smart grid network into the cloud. In doing so, ARM also is seeing huge opportunities in low power radio communications and IEEE802.15 technology as well as data streaming technology.

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