Every so often a new chip provider emerges to try to challenge Intel in the server world, often touting credentials in power and cost efficiency, both essential to cloud economics. In the past, these challengers have often used ARM cores, though innovators like Smoothstone have often fallen by the wayside. The latest crop of server processor start-ups are tending to use alternatives to ARM, the latest example being Nuvia, which has unveiled its plans to design a CPU server core and associated system-on-chip (SoC) to support high performance cloud applications such as vRAN and AI. Among the founders are Gerard Williams, CEO of the new venture, who was Apple’s chief CPU architect for almost a decade, and prior to that,…