Nutanix is considering moving some of its products to the Arm CPU architecture in the future, but currently, it is not a priority for the company. The possibility of an Arm port was brought up by the Chief Technology Officer, Manosiz Bhattacharyya, during a conference where Nutanix discussed converting parts of its stack to containerized services for cloud-native environments.
While hyperscalers like AWS and Oracle have embraced Arm-powered servers for certain workloads due to their price/performance advantages, Nutanix is cautious and waiting to see if major hardware vendors adopt Arm as a primary platform. Bhattacharyya mentioned that an Arm version of Nutanix’s Kubernetes platform could be on the horizon, depending on the industry’s acceptance of the architecture.
The CTO expressed confidence in eventually moving Nutanix’s containerized services to Arm, as the architecture is commonly used for cloud-native applications, which are a focus for the company. He believes that bringing container substrate to Arm aligns with Nutanix’s long-term strategy. Additionally, he mentioned the possibility of adapting the AOS storage service, which would be the company’s first hypervisor-less product, for Arm in the future.
However, Bhattacharyya clarified that there are no plans to port Nutanix’s hypervisor to Arm, as there is currently no demand for virtual machines on this architecture. He noted the significance of the Arm architecture in relation to Nvidia’s use of compute cores in GPUs and the trend of SoCs like Apple’s silicon, which integrate CPU, GPU, NPU, and memory on a single chip for performance benefits.
At the conference, Nutanix also introduced a new offering related to AI, highlighting the complexity of tools required for inference execution and the value of simplifying deployment processes. Bhattacharyya emphasized that the AI product is not just a trend but a strategic move to address the evolving landscape of AI technology.
In conclusion, Nutanix is exploring the possibility of migrating some products to the Arm architecture while closely monitoring industry trends and hardware advancements. The company remains focused on cloud-native applications and AI, aiming to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing technological landscape.
Article Source
https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/23/nutanix_arm_server_plans/