Rise of ARM Servers in China: Market Share, Trends, and Implications

Recently, CITIC Bank announced the winning results of a 6.5 billion‑RMB "General Infrastructure Integrator" procurement project, which includes servers (ARM/C86 chips), networking equipment, and storage devices. Notably, ARM servers accounted for 34 billion RMB, representing 77% of the total server spend, while x86 (C86) servers were only 10 billion RMB.

Globally, x86 CPUs have long dominated the server market; in 2021, Intel and AMD together held 92.5% of the market, whereas ARM server CPUs (mainly from Amazon and Ampere) held just 2.9%.

However, ARM server CPU growth is striking. In 2022, Amazon and Ampere’s combined market share rose to 4.7%, a year‑over‑year increase of over 60%.

Conversely, Intel’s share fell by 10 percentage points in 2022, and although AMD grew by more than 8 points, it mainly ate into Intel’s share, bringing the combined x86 share down to 90.6%.

Assuming China accounts for 25% of the global server market, the Q1 2023 Chinese server market is roughly $70 billion, implying ARM servers hold about 16% of the domestic market—already a leading position worldwide.

Compared with Intel and AMD x86 CPUs, ARM CPUs offer lower‑cost options for data centers and higher performance per watt.

Cartner data shows that in Q1 2023, China contributed 40% of global ARM server shipments (down from about 47% in Q2 2022), suggesting ARM’s share in China may be well above 10%.

U.S. restrictions on high‑performance x86 CPUs have made it harder for Chinese operators to source Intel and AMD chips, pushing them toward more accessible ARM CPUs, especially those designed by domestic vendors.

It is foreseeable that as ARM server CPUs rise, the x86 share in the server market will eventually fall below 90%.

Many players are entering the ARM server space; cloud providers are developing their own ARM CPUs to gain efficiency gains. ARM offers a customizable ecosystem based on the open Armv8 and Armv9 instruction sets, with Chinese designs (e.g., Huawei, Phytium) built on Armv8.

Arm’s Neoverse series (V, N, and E lines) targets data‑center workloads, and Alibaba’s Pingtouge Yitian‑710 chip is based on the Armv9 Neoverse N2 core.

While ARM’s potential is evident, the emerging RISC‑V architecture remains in its early server stage; its ecosystem still needs maturation before it can compete broadly.