Arm Servers: 70% Growth in 2024 | The Register
Prepare for a seismic shift: Arm server shipments are forecast to explode by a staggering 70% in 2025. This surge, revealed by IDC, signals a meaningful leap for the primarykeyword in data centers, fueled by advancements in AI capabilities and the rise of rack-scale configurations. This rapid expansion of secondarykeyword use is reshaping the server landscape,defying arm’s initial ambitions,even as the overall server market hits new highs. Explore the evolving market dynamics with News Directory 3 and learn how AI-driven demand is accelerating this growth. Discover what’s next for the server market.
Arm Server Shipments to Jump 70% in 2025, Says IDC
Updated June 30, 2025
Worldwide shipments of Arm-based servers are poised for a significant increase, with projections indicating a 70% jump in 2025. However, according to market intelligence firm IDC, this growth still falls short of Arm’s goal to capture 50% of the datacenter CPU market by year’s end.
IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker reveals that Arm architecture servers are expected to represent 21.1% of total global shipments this year. This figure contrasts with the more ambitious 50% target voiced in April by Arm infrastructure chief Mohamed Awad.
The surge in interest for Arm servers is largely attributed to the introduction of large rack-scale configurations, such as Nvidia’s DGX GB200 NVL72 systems designed for AI processing. Servers equipped with at least one GPU, often marketed as AI-capable, are forecast to grow by 46.7% and account for nearly half of the total market value in 2025.
The overall server market experienced substantial growth, reaching a record $95.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025, marking a 134.1% increase year-over-year. As a result, IDC has revised its full-year forecast to $366 billion, representing a 44.6% rise and an all-time high for the industry. The fast adoption rate among hyperscale customers and cloud service providers is a key driver of this expansion.
IDC projects the “industry standard” x86 server segment will grow by 39.9% in 2025, reaching $283.9 billion. Non-x86 systems are anticipated to grow at a faster rate of 63.7% year-over-year, totaling $82 billion.
Regionally, the U.S. market is expected to lead the expansion with a 59.7% increase over 2024, accounting for nearly 62% of total server revenue by the end of 2025. China is also experiencing strong growth, with IDC forecasting a 39.5% increase, representing over 21% of worldwide quarterly revenue. EMEA and Latin America are projected to see single-digit growth at 7% and 0.7%, respectively.Canada is expected to decline by 9.6% due to a significant deal in 2024.
Kuba Stolarski, IDC’s vice president for worldwide infrastructure research, commented on the server market’s growth, stating that the demand for increased compute power to support AI processing is likely to continue.
“The evolution from simple chatbots to reasoning models to agentic AI will require several orders of magnitude more processing capacity, especially for inferencing,” Stolarski said.
What’s next
The server market’s focus will likely remain on meeting the escalating demands of AI and cloud computing, with Arm servers playing an increasingly significant role in addressing these needs. The role of AI-capable servers will continue to expand.