Qualcomm joins Xen Project Advisory Board

And comes right out and says why: it wants more ARM-powered servers and clouds

Qualcomm has joined the Xen Project's Advisory Board, the group of companies “committed to the market and technical success of the Xen Project” and who “provide financial support, technical contributions, and set high-level policy decisions.”

And it's done so “to accelerate ARM-server and hyperscale cloud development, according to the Linux Foundation.

The chip-maker was name-checked as one of the top ten contributors to the recently-released Xen 4.8, which added support for live patching of ARMv8-A CPUs in order to make ARM-powered servers running Xen more robust.

All concerned are saying it's a fine thing that Qualcomm has joined the Advisory Board, because its presence will help with the Project's current focus on “fine-tuning the hypervisor for better ARM support to capitalize on new developments with mobile, cloud and web-scale computing.”

Qualcomm clambering aboard Xen in an official capacity is an obvious step given its recent reveal of a 10nm server chip, as being able to wield a little more influence over Xen's direction will help it to steer the hypervisor in potentially-useful directions.

Xen can already point to Amazon Web Services as a user, albeit on x86 silicon. ARM server-makers, however, have only a few smaller clouds to trumpet, from the likes of Packet, Igneous Systems and OVH, plus Google's thought bubble about non-x86s from IBM or ARM.

Analyst firm IDC, meanwhile, recently reported that ARM servers “have yet to make an impact on the server market” and could find only “minimal revenue” from the architecture when used in servers.

Qualcomm's therefore got its work cut out for it. ®