Non-X86 Servers Boom Even Faster Than The Rest Of The AI-Infused And GPU-Hungry Market
The Register, Friday, March 21st, 2025
Analyst finds 91 percent revenue growth with white box makers leading the way
Here's another thing AI can do: Increase revenue from selling servers by 91 percent year-over year, according to analyst firm IDC.
The firm on Wednesday published data on server sales for the final quarter of 2024 and found box-makers earned revenue of $77.3 billion, up from $40.5 billion in Q4 2023.
$54.8 billion of that spend went on x86 servers, a 59.9 percent increase. But revenue from non-x86 servers grew 262.1 percent year over year to $22.5 billion. Sadly, IDC hasn't said what processor resides within those boxes, but it seems a safe bet to assume much of the non-x86 spend went on Arm-powered processors using custom chips cooked up by the likes of AWS, Microsoft, and Alibaba Cloud. Sorry, IBM and SPARC fans - your preferred platform has almost certainly not made an astonishing comeback.