After conquering the iPhone, chip designer ARM chases supercomputers

Having dominated the mobile world for some time, ARM -- the company whose CPU design is in Apple's iPhone -- is now going after the fastest computers in the world.

The chip-design company wants to graduate its processor architecture and take on complex calculations that drive tasks like weather modeling, economic forecasting and scientific research -- the domain of high-performance computing (HPC).

Next month, ARM will detail the "ARMv8-A Next Generation Vector Architecture for HPC" at the Hot Chips conference. The architecture will be based on 64-bit CPUs, but ARM declined to share further information on it.

For ARM, HPC is a new market. While it has been successful in tablets and smartphones, it has failed to rock PCs, and it is struggling to get into servers, despite widespread interest on the part of hardware makers. There are software issues involved, and customers don't want to change from x86 to ARM overnight.

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