With all the talk of leaner, simpler cores in the datacenter, and the rumblings about ARM chips going into cloud servers, you'd think that Intel would be happy to position Atom as a server part. But you'd be wrong. PC World is reporting some remarks by an Intel VP, where he takes a neutral stance on the idea of Atom in the datacenter.

"We are not opposed to an Atom based server, but we just don't see broad adoption of the Atom as a server chip," Intel's Kirk Skaugen told the publication.

These remarks track almost exactly with Intel CTO Justin Rattner's comments at the most recent Intel R&D day. In response to a question about the Atom-based, 512-core SeaMicro server, Rattner acknowledged that there's a role for simpler cores in the datacenter. But he stopped short of encouraging Atom's uptake there. Instead, he pointed to the Single Chip Cloud Computer project as the best example of Intel's current thinking on the best way to meet the cloud datacenter's demand for a sea of tiny cores.

There are two problems with the SCCC, however, the first of which is that it's not yet a real product, and it's not clear when it will turn into one. The other problem with the SCCC is that its individual cores are probably too wimpy. To bolster support for the idea that Xeon still beats Atom in the datacenter, Skaugen cited a paper by Google Fellow Urs Holzle, entitled "Brawny cores still beat wimpy cores, most of the time" [PDF]. Holzle's paper makes the point that, while Google generally prefers throughput-oriented architectures to peak-performance-oriented architectures, it is possible for the cores to be too weak.

Specifically, Holzle writes that when a so-called "wimpy core" lags a "brawny core" by a factor of two in raw performance, it stops making sense for Google's data centers. That's just too much of a performance delta, and at that point a bigger, more powerful core is better, even if it costs a lot more in wattage.

The individual cores in Intel's SCCC demo are very weak—about half the transistor count of an Atom. So even if Intel brought the SCCC to market tomorrow, Atom might still be a better bet simply because its absolute performance is closer to that of a normal (i.e., out-of-order), low-power x86 core.

While Intel putters about with its SCCC science project, ARM is quite seriously attacking the datacenter with its next-generation Cortex A15 part, codenamed Eagle.

Eagle boasts a number of features that are directly aimed at the same server space that Intel is refusing to market Atom at, despite the latter's suitability for such workloads. And in recent days, ARM has also said that it's looking into adding simultaneous multithreading to future chips—a memory latency-hiding feature that makes a lot less sense for mobiles than it does for cloud servers.

Intel should consider shifting its position on Atom in servers from "neutral" to "strong buy," even if it does take a bit of the wind out of Xeon's sails. If they continue to push Xeon while encouraging everyone who wants a simpler server core to hold out for SCCC, they may leave a large opening that ARM (and possibly AMD) can waltz right through.