Microsoft is working on its own Arm processor designs for its datacenter servers, according to a Bloomberg report[1] on December 18. Bloomberg also says Microsoft is exploring using another chip that would power some Surface PCs, the report adds.
While some are painting this as Microsoft responding to Apple's recent decision to field its own Arm-based M1 processor[2], Microsoft and Qualcomm already had partnered since 2019 on Microsoft's Arm chip that is inside the original Surface Pro X[3]. The Pro X 2 uses the SQ2 chip[4], which is a variant of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx chip without 5G.
The part to me that's more interesting is Microsoft using Arm in servers. Microsoft already had been working with Qualcomm and Caviium -- along with Intel and AMD on Project Olympus, Microsoft's next-generation cloud-hardware design[5] it provided to the Open Comput Project. In 2017, Microsoft also announced that it has been involved with multiple ARM suppliers, including Qualcomm and Cavium on getting Windows Server to run ARM but for its own internal datacenter use only[6].
Back in 2017, I asked officials whether Microsoft would ever make Windows Server on ARM available externally to partners and customers. They said the technology was for internal use only for the purposes of evaluation of Azure services on Arm servers. But officials did note at the time that they believed Arm servers are good for internal cloud applications such as search and indexing, storage, databases, big data, and machine learning workloads.
I asked Microsoft officials about today's Bloomberg report and received this response from Corporate Communications chief Frank Shaw:
"Because silicon is a foundational building block for technology, we're continuing