Xeon D and Denverton will join a small but emerging market for microservers, designed for instances where you often want multiple, very-low power servers. This has been something that has been discussed in concepts from the Open Compute Project and HP's Project Moonshot, and the applications do seem to be growing.
Unlike in the more mainstream server market, where Intel is rather dominant, the microserver space is just emerging, and there are lots of competitors. ARM-based manufacturers have been talking about ARM servers for years, but in recent months, the products have seemed to come much closer to reality.
AMD has plans for a 64-bit ARM-based server chip called the A1100 or Seattle, which it says is now sampling and will be shipping later this year. Meanwhile, Applied Micro is sampling its 64-bit X-Gene II (called Shadowcat) with plans for a new version called X-Gene III or Skylark (not to be confused with Intel's Skylake PC processor) for next year.
But the real thing holding back ARM servers seems to be software support, as most enterprises require a full software stack before they can start to move applications. To that end, the most interesting project is probably the Linaro Enterprise Group, which is working to create a full Linux stack for the ARM server ecosystem. There's also an Ubuntu Linux project for ARM. But it will take some time for these ecosystems to get going, so my guess is the initial market for ARM servers will be for the hyperscale Web companies who typically write their own software.
While AMD is waiting for its ARM server, it has been pushing low-power solutions through its SeaMicro SM15000 system, which uses the single-socket version of AMD's Opteron processors, as well as Intel's E3 processors with its own Freedom Fabric to connect the chips. This week, for instance, it announced a version designed to work with OpenStack through software with Canonical.
Intel and ARM have been competing in many markets, and storage, networking, and microservers seem to be areas of increasing competition. It should be interesting to watch.