Integrated GPU Servers Drive Sector Boom as Adoption of ARM Architectures Grows and Investment in Generative AI Infrastructure Accelerates
The global server market is experiencing a historic moment. According to the latest report from IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, the total market value is projected to reach $366 billion by 2025, representing a 44.6% growth compared to 2024. In just the first quarter of this year, the sector generated $95.2 billion, marking a record year-over-year increase of 134.1%, largely driven by demand for servers capable of artificial intelligence (AI).
GPU Servers: The Growth Engine
IDC reports that servers equipped with integrated GPUs are at the center of this transformation. Their market value is expected to grow by 46.7% year-over-year by 2025, accounting for almost half of the total server market value. This acceleration is due to the mass adoption by cloud providers and hyperscalers needing advanced infrastructure to run generative and reasoning AI models.
In total, the x86 server market will grow by 39.9%, reaching $283.9 billion, while non-x86 servers—including those based on ARM architectures—will increase by 63.7%, with an estimated value of $82 billion.
ARM-based servers, due to their efficiency and new large-scale configurations (rackscale), will see a 70% year-over-year growth, representing 21.1% of the total units shipped.
Artificial Intelligence: From Conversational Models to Advanced Reasoning
According to Kuba Stolarski, Vice President of Global Infrastructure Research at IDC, the growth of AI requires more than just training capacity. “The evolution from chatbots to reasoning models and autonomous agents (agentic AI) demands orders of magnitude more power, especially for inference,” he states.
Stolarski also references the Stargate project, which envisions up to $500 billion in investment for general artificial intelligence (AGI) infrastructure, and the R1 model from DeepSeek, which demonstrated much higher requirements than initially estimated.
“Advances in efficiency are desirable, but even so, next-generation reasoning models will demand more processing capacity and distributed architecture,” explains the analyst.
The U.S. and China Dominate the Global Market
Geographically, the U.S. leads regional growth with a projected 59.7% year-over-year increase, accounting for 62% of the sector’s global revenue by 2025. China, on the other hand, will grow by 39.5% and represent more than 21% of quarterly revenues.
Other regions showing notable growth include Japan (33.9%) and the APeJC region (Asia Pacific excluding Japan and China), with a 10.8% increase. In contrast, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) will grow by only 7%, Latin America will see a modest 0.7%, and Canada will experience a decline of -9.6%, due to comparisons with an extraordinary contract in 2024.
Segmentation and Definition of Accelerators
IDC distinguishes three types of servers:
Non-accelerated: without GPUs or other specific processors (though they may include integrated graphics).
With GPU: using discrete or integrated graphics processors, also applicable for GPGPU tasks (general processing).
- Other Accelerators: include FPGAs (reconfigurable chips) and ASICs (non-reconfigurable purpose-specific circuits).
A Market in Full Reconfiguration
The unprecedented growth of the server market is closely linked to the rise of generative AI and the transformation of data centers, which now must adapt to more intensive, flexible, and distributed workloads.
IDC’s tracking via the Quarterly Server Tracker enables tech companies and providers to adjust their strategies based on real market share data, projections, and segment and regional analyses. This tracking is part of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker, covering servers, enterprise storage, and specialized devices (HCI and PBBA).
via: idc