Broadcom believes that Arm servers will not occupy a significant market share in the enterprise sector for at least the next three to five years. Ram Velaga said he has been leading Broadcom’s enterprise software division, which includes former business units of VMware, Symantec and CA, since Jan. 1.
VMware remains the most widely used enterprise server virtualization vendor, and its users will soon be unable to use Arm servers if the Arm platform doesn’t become its own standalone part, a situation few want, he noted. register.
Velaga said VMware’s mission will not change under his leadership. “Regardless of the instruction set, we will become an abstraction layer for the CPU and GPU,” he said. Currently, VMware virtualizes servers, storage and networks, but only on x86 architecture. The company has also expanded its activities in GPU virtualization, supporting accelerators from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
Image source: VMware
In addition, VMware also focuses on solutions related to SmartNIC/DPU, which often use Arm processors. Back in 2020, the company launched a project Monterey Plan Transfer some NSX functionality to such devices. We mainly discuss firewalls and intrusion detection tools. While this project is ongoing, VMware is also working on building a virtual machine hypervisor for Arm servers. Recently Preview provided this technology. But… even five years ago the company did the same thingalthough support was limited to processors at the time Ampere other.
Velaga acknowledged that Arm will likely become part of the enterprise IT market. However, he said it will take several years for Arm servers to gain significant market share in the enterprise, so VMware no meaning Migrate your hypervisor quickly. He added that VMware customers are simply not interested in processors built on RISC-V.
Velaga said about 60% of his department’s $5 billion in annual research spending goes toward updating VMware’s current products. The remainder of the funding is used to develop new products, such as the recently announced VMware Artificial Intelligence Factory. AI is a trend now. This is not the case with Arm-based servers. So it’s not hard to guess where VMware will allocate its R&D dollars in the coming years, The Register writes.
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