ARM’s bid to make its processor core designs into real challengers to Intel x86, in high end servers and cloud infrastructure, has had a rocky ride. And just as it is starting to gain some real momentum in environments such as vRAN infrastructure, it may be challenged in turn by the open processor architecture, RISC-V, which also has its eyes on advanced use cases that require cost and power efficiency as well as performance. In the ARM world, early innovators such as Smoothstone fell short on performance with 32-bit designs, and even the move to a 64-bit architecture did not result in a major breakthrough against the incumbent, despite calls by hyperscalers and server makers for more choice of suppliers.…