substantial, is waning. Notwithstanding
Apple’s phenomenal success, most
smartphones and tablets are now designed,
built, and purchased globally,
and the annual sales volume of smartphones
and tablets exceeds that of PCs
and servers.
This ongoing shift in consumer
preferences and markets is accompanied
by another technology shift.
Smartphones and tablets are based on
energy-efficient microprocessors—a
key component of proposed exascale
computing designs—and systems-ona-
chip (SoCs) using the ARM architecture.
Unlike Intel and AMD, which
design and manufacture the x86 chips
found in today’s PCs and most leadingedge
servers and HPC systems, ARM
does not manufacture its own chips.
Rather, it licenses its designs to others,
who incorporate the ARM architecture
into custom SoCs that are manufactured
by global semiconductor foundries
like Taiwan’s TSMC.