The latest company to (I don't know how to pronounce that either; they were formerly known as Smoothstone). Its chips will be based on the ARM Cortex A9 quad-core design but--like the , which uses Intel Atom chips--the goal is to make a chip that can be packed into a server in multiples of up to 120.

And in the short term this might be the trend. Yes, ARM might have an impact upon the server space but only in highly-specialized high-powered areas, where ponying up a few hundred thousand dollars for hardware isn't unusual.

Yet in some ways the signs are right for a potential explosion in server--and perhaps even desktop--ARM systems. There's a variety of manufacturers out there, making for a competitive marketplace that could keep prices low. And at the 1-2GHz speeds and dual/quad-core architectures, ARM chips have arguably reached a baseline level of performance that's good enough for a variety of tasks, especially if several chips are combined on one motherboard. (Remember that heat dissipation just isn't a huge issue with these low-powered chips, so there are no design issues.)

But you shouldn't hold your breath for an ARM server or desktop near you soon.

We have the chips, but what about the rest of the hardware? ARM chips use the same and disks as regular computers, but check your nearest PC supplier and you'll find no motherboards that support ARM.