ARM servers could make their presence felt in data centers starting in 2014. HP and Dell are offering ARM servers for testing purposes in their laboratories so customers can benchmark and get a first-hand look at the servers.

The ARM processors are currently only 32-bit, though the chip designer has announced the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. Test servers with the new 64-bit architecture are expected to come out either late this year or early next year. A lot of software developers are writing for the x86 architecture, and ARM hopes to attract more developers as more ARM servers become available.