Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/microsoft-pledges-to-use-arm-server-chips-threatening-intel-s-dominance

by rayuela • 9 years ago

379 230 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

robert_foss2• 9 years ago

For what?

Microsoft is not really a dominant force in the server space.

deelowe2• 9 years ago

MS is one of the major players in open compute and in the top three for cloud services.

shliachtx• 9 years ago

Azure is one of the big three in cloud computing - Google, Amazon, and Microsoft

tyingq• 9 years ago

And they also run some pretty large things that could be run on ARM with no visible impact to customers. Bing, hosted Outlook, etc.

robert_foss2• 9 years ago

Sure, but it is a single cloud.

Will you ever be able to buy these products? And would you ever want to? Windows Server 20XX on ARMv8 will forever remain a niche platform at best.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

They are quite large in the server space: http://map.buildazure.com

melling• 9 years ago

According to the article:

"its Azure service is No. 2 in cloud infrastructure behind Amazon, and it's one of the biggest server buyers"

You don't have to be "dominant" to have influence.

drzaiusapelord3• 9 years ago

Most of the world you take for granted runs on Azure. I don't mean by numbers, but by importance. Big enterprise loves it. AWS is technically bigger but its mostly for web technologies. Many companies run on some level of Azure or O365. Its insane how big MS is in this space and how quietly because they don't get the big headlines due to Windows server space being 'boring enterprise stuff.'

deepnotderp3• 9 years ago

They're not replacing Intel chips from the looks of it though, right?

Analemma_• 9 years ago

No, they're going to use it in Azure where it makes cost sense, and future versions of Windows and Windows Server will run on ARM with emulation for x86 if you need it, but x86 support is definitely not going away.

frandroid• 9 years ago

x86 support is definitely not going away.

To say the least. :)

zbjornson• 9 years ago

Competition is great, but this also seems like a rather big setback to the goal of having multi-cloud applications, in instances where the app can only run on x86-64.

Zekio• 9 years ago

isn't it microsoft who are making x86 emulation for ARM

frozenport• 9 years ago

I would think any cost per performance advantage would be lost.

my1235• 9 years ago

It's Microsoft indeed.

mikeash2• 9 years ago

Writing architecture-specific code is what would be a setback to that goal. Either write portable code, or be prepared to translate non-portable parts to new CPUs from time to time.

my1235• 9 years ago

AMD designs are used as a part of the design, and AMD has shown x86 and ARM chips which fit in the same sockets

mrweasel• 9 years ago

On the same motherboards? That's rather impressive, if the same motherboard can support two different chip architectures. Having an ARM chip that just happens to use an AM3/AM4 socket is less impressive.

keth2• 9 years ago

Project Skybridge was cancelled as far as I know. [0] Not sure if we see something like that in the future, considering how quiet AMD is about their ARM plans. Although a ARM chip with really good power efficency would be nice below Ryzen.

  Finally, we’ll note that this roadmap is empty of any mentions of project Skybridge. CEO Lisa Su has commented that AMD has decided to change their focus away from Skybridge based on customer feedback. Customers were telling AMD that they didn't necessarily need socket compatible solutions, so AMD is going to work on differentiated solutions. That said, given that Skybridge was announced last year and planned for 20nm, I suspect that it has also become a victim of the short lifespan (and underperforming nature) of 20nm, leading to it being downplayed in favor of 14nm prodcts.

[0] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9231/amds-20162017-x86-roadmap...

rb808• 9 years ago

There are fewer binary apps these days though. Java/Scala, C#/F#, JS, Python, Erlang should all be fine.

inyorgroove• 9 years ago

Don't most docker containers contain x86 binaries?

MikeKusold• 9 years ago

If you need a binary, Go can be cross-compiled for ARM as well.

dragontamer• 9 years ago

Microsoft has UWP Apps as part of Windows 10. Any UWP application will automatically run in the .NET Virtual Machine and work on both x86 and ARM.

That, in combination with emulation for the x86-based legacy stuff, should be a powerful reason to use the Microsoft platform.

Even if ARM servers don't become a thing, the support of ARM servers only benefits Microsoft and their current "Universal Windows Platform" strategy.

Const-me• 9 years ago

Yes, Microsoft has UWP.

No, UWP and .NET are orthogonal. When I need to, I’m using C++ to develop my UWP apps just fine.

Edit: and even when using .NET, by default, UWP apps don’t run in the virtual machine. Instead, they’re compiled to native code with .NET Native.

pjmlp10• 9 years ago

This is why using some kind of bytecode as portable binary format has been a long tradition on mainframes, almost since the early days, when it was executed via microcode.

Modern computing has just been catching up with them.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

Payback time?

https://semiaccurate.com/2016/11/17/intel-preferentially-off...

Okay, obviously this partnership started years back, but it's nice to see that not everyone is willing to encourage Intel's monopoly, as Google often does (in Chromebooks, too, even though Intel's chips are virtually unnecessary there).

Although, to be fair, the "Wintel" name didn't come out of nowhere. Microsoft obviously played its part in growing Intel's monopoly for a long time, too.

rbanffy3• 9 years ago

Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel. They built Windows NT to be multi-platform and, at a given time, it ran on MIPS, PPC, Alpha and a later version on Itanium.

Intel has been much more dependent on Microsoft's monopoly than the contrary.

throwaway2048• 9 years ago

the amount of relevant windows software that can run on ARM is a rounding error, and x86 emulation on ARM sounds completely unusable.

Microsoft is very dependant on x86.

flamedoge• 9 years ago

So they translating asm to C?

scholia7• 9 years ago

Microsoft tried as much as it could to avoid being locked into Intel.

... while Intel kept looking at Linux and anything else that might help it avoid being locked into Microsoft ;-)

bryanlarsen• 9 years ago

Google's doing quite a bit of work to make ARM a viable Chromebook processor. http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/22/14691396/google-chromebook...

sjellis2• 9 years ago

Google have been doing something with POWER CPUs for a few years now, at least on an experimental basis.

2016, Power 9:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3052951/cloud-computing...

2014, Power 8:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2149080/google-shows-homegrow...

kbenson• 9 years ago

Each time Google looks into POWER, it seems to be when it's time to renegotiate with Intel. This is a tried and true tactic for better Intel pricing at this point. I was even talking about it (and got somewhat of a corroboration) a few days ago[1].

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13786170

AlphaSite3• 9 years ago

Im very curious how this will work for AMD with their K12 chip. They will have high performance x86_64 and AARCH64 chips.

deagle50• 9 years ago

Last I read K12 was cancelled.

snuxoll• 9 years ago

I don't believe it was canceled, it was certainly delayed to finish Zen though.

keth2• 9 years ago

Maybe you mean Skybridge? The last I read K12 was only delayed until 2017/2018 (but Skybridge was cancelled).

willvarfar• 9 years ago

We wouldn't even bring something to a conference if we didn't think this was a committed project and something that's part of our road map."

As anyone who rode the rollercoaster of abandonment in the ActiveX years recalls, their previous MO was all about things that became uncommitted after being in their road map :(

I really hope there's some kind of future for non-Intel players.

justin665• 9 years ago

ActiveX deserved abandonment, but anyone who remembers those years probably also remembers that Microsoft is capable of supporting NT on many different architectures.

rleigh5• 9 years ago

Potentially capable; their support for non-x86 has always fallen short.

If you look at e.g. Linux or BSD distributions, the entire world is rebuilt for every architecture. Running Linux on powerpc, arm, amd64, I get the exact same experience across the board as x86 bar platform-specific bits like openfirmware/efi tools. Microsoft has never done this. The vast majority of their stuff remains x86 only, making arm and even x64 second class citizens, with x64 only being viable as a result of the x86 compatibility. Until Microsoft start building and providing every binary as a native build, and providing the tooling for others to do the same, they will remain wedded to x86, and I'll be unable to take their support for other platforms seriously.

If a bunch of volunteers can manage to provide over 20000 software packages for over 10 architectures, totalling over 500000 binary packages, it's entirely possible for Microsoft to support three. When I used to maintain the Debian build tools, it took 18 hours to rebuild around all 18000 packages; compilers, kernel, tools, applications, everything. It would be much faster on a current system. It's all possible from a technical point of view.

tonyedgecombe2• 9 years ago

It would be nice for everybody if we could shed the Intel "tax".

tonyedgecombe2• 9 years ago

Well, everybody but the Intel employees here.

imglorp• 9 years ago

This could well be a negotiating strategy to rejigger the relationship with Intel. Dell did exactly the same thing a number of times for similar reasons.

So all you do is: put out some press releases, ramp up some hires, put out some glossy product roadmaps. Intel starts to get separation anxiety and flinches: well, maybe they can afford to come closer to AMD prices for another year. They kiss up and you back out of your false posturing. Rinse and repeat every few years.

the-dude• 9 years ago

Ah, just like governments threaten to use Linux to rejigger MS.

vlunkr• 9 years ago

I've heard similar theories about SteamOS. That it was a threat to Microsoft since they had just released their own store on Windows 8 that competed with Steam. I'm inclined to believe it since Valve seems to not care about it much anymore.

BinaryIdiot• 9 years ago

Probably depends on where the Linux is being used. When I did DoD contracting there was very much a constant push towards using Linux and OSS where possible but this was mostly in product development, not client operating systems.

vvanders• 9 years ago

This is pretty par for the course in a lot of HW companies(esp SoC selection). Where it gets tricky is when you've pulled that move a couple times and then it turns out AMD/ARM/etc actually have the good chips.

At that point you've burned the other company so many times by changing at the last minute that it becomes hard to get real support and engagement where you actually need it.

nomel3• 9 years ago

actually have the good chips.

Has that ever been the case yet, for ARM servers?

There's no "magic" in ARM. The reduced power comes from the reduced complexity. Heck, branch prediction is fairly new in ARM. I have trouble seeing a time when an Intel chip will ever fall behind even a bucket full of ARM chips, unless workloads ever fall near zero.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

Not quite. They've been working together for a few years to do this. Qualcomm even based its motherboard design off of Microsoft's Project Olympus.

QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems. QDT’s OCP submission is the result of a multi-faceted, multi-level engagement between the two companies to facilitate ARM adoption into the data center. It encompasses multiple areas of hardware and software including board development, firmware, operating system, compilers and tools, and CoreCLR.

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2017/03/08/qualcomm-c...

Also, I doubt Microsoft went through the trouble of supporting full x86 programs on Qualcomm's ARM chips just to improve the relationship with Intel. If anything, finally bringing ARM to not just servers, but Windows notebooks is what will make Intel even angrier with Microsoft.

So far, the main reason why ARM couldn't enter the PC market was the Windows lock-in - if x86 programs wouldn't work on ARM, then they had no chance (save for UWP apps gaining huge popularity, which hasn't happened yet, and I don't expect to happen for at least a few more years, if ever).

pm90• 9 years ago

Why doesn't apple move macbooks to ARM processors?

nomel3• 9 years ago

We're talking about servers here, which has nothing to do with the OS. If ARM chips were appropriate, we would see them in Linux, but time and time again, the power to performance just doesn't make sense for ARM, when compared to an Intel chip, for reasonable workloads.

Twirrim2• 9 years ago

Dell did this for ages with AMD chips. Same time every year you'd see an article go across all the magazines about Dell planning to introduce AMD chips to their servers, and just as quickly vanish once Dell had finished negotiating with Intel.

r00fus• 9 years ago

The resulting Intel Payola sometimes carrying Dell's quarters - preventing Dell from missing profitability.

https://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/intel-and-dell-scum-...

Spooky232• 9 years ago

You can do this with a moderate sized enterprise. Engage HP/Dell or a strong VAR. Get them on the hook and focus on Intel E7 (and SQL Server enterprise if you are an MS shop).

Then get meeting scheduled with IBM and Oracle. Talk to the VAR or OEM guy in your office with your POWER mug poorly hidden. Start asking questions about TPC benchmarks and error correction. Ask if you can pay for cores only when you need peak capacity.

Intel will provide them with marketing support, potentially very significant if they care about you. Microsoft will also bend over backwards for an Oracle compete opportunity.

ams6110• 9 years ago

They did more than plan, I have a rack full of older Dell servers with AMD CPUs.

TwoBit• 9 years ago

That might change with AMD's new chips.

askvictor• 9 years ago

At some point though, this sends the competition (AMD) out of business, then, no more negotiation of this sort, and also everyone is worse off.

andreiw14• 9 years ago

Actually, the only signal so far is to AMD to continue investing developing ARM chips after the A1100.

andreiw14• 9 years ago

No, this is the real deal, apparently. Obviously the work has gone on for years but between OCP and Xeon competitive chips (ThunderX2 and Centriq) it makes sense to put public weight behind it.

The real question is if WSL (Ubuntu for Windows) will be available for AArch64 Windows. Because the only real 64-bit ARM software ecosystem today is Linux (courtesy of Linaro, Redhat, Canonical, Suse, and ARM).

Between WSL and BTing legacy 32-bit x86 apps this could be a decent offering for folks who already have Microsoft infrastructure. Even cooler if Hyper-V is ported.

Jabbles• 9 years ago

Perhaps spurred by Google's recent announcement that they have Skylake chips in their cloud: https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/02/Google-Cloud-Pl...

faragon• 9 years ago

Sure. And also, may be the Google-Inte Skylake comes from past year, when Google was testing POWER9 chips... [1]

[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/07/open_power_summit_p...

david-cako• 9 years ago

Reminds me of how media conglomerates fuck with the satellite/cable companies.

Spooky232• 9 years ago

It could be, but vendors tend to have epiphanies when they eat their dog food.

Microsoft and Exchange was a great example. Doing things like running big mailboxes, having HA services, and doing discovery were ridiculous hacks until Exchange Online came around and subjected them to the pain.

Similarly, I'm sure Microsoft has plenty of idle servers sitting around doing very little that could easily be running more effectively on ARM.

Intel has improved power management, but their low-end chips suck.

gigatexal2• 9 years ago

This is awesome: with a renewed AMD and now ARM gaining another big proponent (Apple being the first imo) there might finally be some real competition to Intel's place at the top.

hollerith• 9 years ago

Samsung and Qualcomm aren't big proponents of ARM?

ndesaulniers• 9 years ago

They're quite far behind Apple when it comes to perf. Aren't Apple's ARM chips in their iPad pro competitive with lower end modern x86_64 chips?

gigatexal2• 9 years ago

Sammy and Qualcomm are big players yes I was just speaking regarding North American mindshare which is a misgiving. Though there is something to be said about the absolutely stellar single threaded perf of the Apple designs. Not to mention their GPUs

scholia7• 9 years ago

They are, but ARM probably wouldn't exist in its current form without Apple.

ARM was developed in the 1980s by Acorn -- a small, mostly struggling British company -- as the Acorn Risc Machine. They wanted a simple 6502 replacement without going to the Motorola 68000, as Apple, Atari, Amiga (Commodore), Sinclair and others did.

Apple wanted to use the ARM in the Newton handheld, but wasn't going to bet on a chip owned by a small British company.

So, Apple persuaded Acorn to spin off the ARM operation into a separate company, Advanced Risc Machines. This was jointly owned by Acorn, Apple and VTI (40/40/20). The rest is history.

VTI got in because Acorn relied on its software tools to design the ARM chip and get it manufactured. Acorn had never designed a chip before and, in the beginning, didn't really know what it was doing.

hatsunearu• 9 years ago

Why though? ARM server chips haven't beat Intel just yet.

nickpeterson2• 9 years ago

Think of how rapidly they've caught up given Intel's lead. I think AMD and arm are great examples that Intel's lead is mostly inertia.

drzaiusapelord3• 9 years ago

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

So depending on your workload, a 96 core 1U is going to save you a lot of U's and power. No idea how Windows Server and Azure services fall into this. Maybe they want to dump specialized tasks onto ARM instead of churning through their x86 infrastructure which takes longer and uses more power.

Data centers are power bound. Power is expensive and instantly turns into heat, which requires yet more power to exhaust and cool. Anything that can bring significant power savings will be taken seriously in data centers. If ARM servers can deliver these power savings, then its a no-brainer to buy them. The cost of porting Exchange, SQL server, Sharepoint, IIS, and Windows Server to ARM is going to be a fraction of the power bill those DC's run. Now that MS is actually paying the server bills, they're realizing that pegging your product to just x86 isn't the wisest move.

gonzo• 9 years ago

Not sure, but you can pick up a 1U server running 96 ARM cores today. ARM cores are optimized for certain types of work and have code to accelerate all sorts of things like AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

True, but that 96 core 1U server is going to bear a high price, and Intel CPUs also have instructions to accelerate AES, SHA1/2, video codecs, etc.

gravypod4• 9 years ago

I cannot wait for ThumbEE to make it into the "main stream" ARM server market. Think about the huge speed boosts we could see?

I don't know why Oracle/Python/Microsoft aren't pushing this harder. Having your JIT-ed code running directly on the CPU? What could be better then that?

ChuckMcM• 9 years ago

I love the fact that this can even be a threat. I'm biased, as an old Sun guy and thinking the x86 architecture was a bit too adhoc[1] and way too proprietary for really clever innovation. I had pretty much given up anyone challenging them in the server space assuming that 100 years from now kids would marvel that their brain implant could be switched into 'real mode' to run something called 'dos' :-).

This is something that I give full credit to Linus and the other developers that have made Linux into a credible server operating system. Without that software base, ARM would never have been able to get where it has.

[1] I get it that most people never see the 'insides' of their systems but its always been something I cared about.

ptrptr• 9 years ago

Question - is this a sign of maturity of ARM architecture? Can we really expect desktop OS to move to ARM? Could Apple start transitioning Apple AX into their laptops?

toyg• 9 years ago

Servers and desktops have very different requirements, just ask the linux guys. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I don't see that happening for another 5 years at least. Apple in particular is already getting a lot of flak for underpowering laptops, switching to Arm now would basically kill the entirety of their remaining high-end offering on desktop.

freehunter• 9 years ago

On the other hand, their A10 chip is roughly on par with the performance of the Intel chip they include in the 12" MacBook. They're not going to replace an i7 with an A10, but maybe replace the M3 or M5 with an A10, replace the i5 with an A11, and shoot for the i7 with an A12 or A13. Why else would they dump so much money into making the fastest ARM chip on the market? The iPhone doesn't need that much power, but they keep pumping it up anyway.

We all know OSX will run on ARM, they just use a different WM and call it iOS.

andreiw14• 9 years ago

For servers - yes. And not just the 64-bit ISA, but the server specs/standards, the hardware ecosystem, OEM/ODM engagement...and software, of course! And conjecture - in the cloud it won't matter what arch you are on.

cududa• 9 years ago

Microsoft is releasing a version of Windows client (not to be confused with server, which was todays announcement) for ARM with an x86 compatibility layer.

foobiekr3• 9 years ago

Has it been long enough for people to forget NT on Alpha, MIPS and x86 (and i860, though not released)? And to forget both PReP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC_Reference_Platform) and CHRP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Plat...) which were going to break the Intel stranglehold once and for all?

bluedino• 9 years ago

Imagine having a time machine, going back to Microsoft in the 90's and telling them to forget SGI, IBM, and HP, port NT to ARM...

scholia7• 9 years ago

While you're there, tell Intel to ignore HP and forget Itanium ;-)

cmrdporcupine2• 9 years ago

They'd laugh at you since at that time ARM was something that ran in either small-format low power low-clock devices (like a Newton) or in fringe machines like the Acorn Archimedes.

tgragnato• 9 years ago

I suddenly feel too young

breischl• 9 years ago

Fear not, that's a problem that will solve itself eventually.

Corrado• 9 years ago

I remember running SQL Server on a Digital Alphaserver 1000a back in the 90's. That machine was a physical beast though I'm not sure about the actual processing speed. The most interesting thing about the whole affair was the split case with drives on one side and a huge ducted fan on the other. That was the single most coolest thing in the room. :)

kartickv2• 9 years ago

Why did CHRP fail?

cmrdporcupine2• 9 years ago

Because it wasn't Intel, it was PowerPC, and Intel always manages to pull a rabbit out of the hat in terms of performance and price.

Also if I recall I don't think Windows NT for PowerPC ever truly saw the light of day. And this was while Windows 95/98 was still dominant and before Windows 2000/XP, so there wasn't really consumer software for it. So no real operating systems.

PowerPC ended up being a dead end which only Apple pursued. Though I guess there were variants that ended up in gaming consoles for a while.

At a job I had (IBM subsidiary) in 1997 they had a pile of early-CHRP boxes hanging around. For kicks I got Linux running on them, just out of curiosity. They were basically juts PCs (PCI bus, etc.) that ran with a PowerPC CPU. Which is effectively what Macs were for years, too.

frostirosti• 9 years ago

AMD really needed the break. This is fantastic news. Don't all consoles also use AMD chips?

mcintyre1994• 9 years ago

ARM, not AMD. But yep, AMD is in PS4 and Xbox One. Nintendo Switch looks like an Nvidia Tegra though (ARM).

trome5• 9 years ago

ARM isn't used for the main CPU for the PS4 or Xbox One, both run customized APUs using x86-64, just like AMD's consumer APU offerings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_technical_specif...

redtuesday• 9 years ago

amd naples will also be used: http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/amd-collaborates-wi...

shmerl• 9 years ago

I'm more interested in new AMD processors in the server. That's going to be interesting.

brutus1213• 9 years ago

Dumb question. Are there commodity ARM SOCs with built-in PCIe controller logic? Or is the idea that you have a separate controller chip? Is PCIe used in ARM systems or do they use a different bus - axi??? Sorry for the dumb questions. Hardware hobbyist here :)

protomok• 9 years ago

Yes, many ARM based SOCs include PCIE IP...SOCs from Freescale, TI, Nvidia, etc. typically supporting PCIE RC and EP.

Lots of boards with ARM based SOCs are using PCIE WiFi/BT combo chips which traditionally used SDIO. PCIE also being used for storage.

ngcc_hk• 9 years ago

Strange many discussion is about game. The article is more about cloud computing including AI, impact to HP etc

cjhanks• 9 years ago

I am far from an expert on this... but. For most software, can ARM realistically replace Intel? If we ignore the obvious advantages of the intrinsic instructions found in most Intel chips...

Intel has a really solid and reliable clock speed with a relatively small number of steady states (low power, turbo, default). In my limited experience, ARM chips seem to have variable clock speeds depending on both the type (floating point/integer) and magnitude (number of cycles/sec) load. Is this only apparent in the IoT space? Does it disappear in ARM chips designed for servers? Am I delusional about this?

It is really difficult to understand just how sensitive any given application is to the monotonic clock. Can most applications really just be ported?

james_a_craig• 9 years ago

To cut a long story short: Yes, most applications can just be ported.

The number of applications that rely on the actual clock rate being steady is extremely close to zero. Bear in mind nearly everything runs fine on laptop machines, which generally have a much wider range of clock states, and have no problems.

Similarly, each core in modern machines is likely to be running at a different speed, and again, no problems.

Finally, the clock rates used are a matter of OS policy; if you tell your OS to keep the CPU at a particular speed, it'll do it, regardless of whether it's an x86 or an ARM CPU.

nickpeterson2• 9 years ago

I'm struck by how hard it would be to track down a bug that depends on the consistency of the clockrate...

mrmondo• 9 years ago

Other than some of the weird licensing I've heard (by know very little) about, I love so much about ARM / RISC based systems but the one thing I find myself needing is higher single core clock speeds, not just on ARM but on x86 as well. Considering how popular and accessible interpreted languages such as Python are these days and yet how hard it is to write multithread code easily I often find processes bottlenecked by a single core, I'd love a high clock speed (3.5ghz+) dual (or more) CPU ARM setup with at least 24 physical cores and a sensible amount of L1/2 cache, but as far as I'm aware it's not really something that's readily available. Something like that would hum with modern Python / Ruby apps or even an ARM build of PostgreSQL and a modern (4.10+) kernel with NVMe storage (if that exists / makes sense for ARM) running either CentOS 7 + some trusted third party mirrors such as elrepo/epel or Fedora Server which I have not actually tried in a production environment so I can't comment on its updates stability but have found it the most reliable desktop desktop distro (excluding macOS).

Microsoft Pledges to Use ARM Server Chips, Threatening Intel's Dominance

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