GigaOM Pro

Next Tuesday’s Weekly Update will take a look at the drive for low power microchips and energy savings, and how it could impact the semiconductor and server industries.  That shift took one more step with Canonical announcing on its blog that the next version of its Ubuntu server software will carry support for ARM. ARM cut its teeth producing low power chips that run most mobile devices and it has set its sights on the server market. Microsoft will port Windows 8 to ARM architecture to allow PC makers to build ARM laptops and desktops, but thus far it has not agreed to port Windows Server. We’re still a long ways from an ARM based server world, but Intel/AMD should consider how important power consumption is becoming in the next generation of data centers. Important enough for Canonical to feel it needed to invest development capital to allow its users to experiment with non-x86 options for microservers.