Ampere Computing has announced its expansion into the telecom sector, a domain long dominated by Chipzilla.

Ampere is making significant strides by securing high-profile clients such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The company's appeal lies in its energy-efficient chips boasting high core densities, features that are particularly attractive to telecom operators.

This move comes as Intel is reportedly contemplating selling its telecom division, a decision that could allow Ampere to capture a larger market share.

While Intel's potential exit from the telecom arena might be strategic, relinquishing this segment to a burgeoning competitor like Ampere could have long-term implications.

At MWC in Barcelona next week, Ampere will be showcasing the industry backing it has for its Arm-based Altra processors, including servers from Supermicro, OS support from Linux firms SUSE and Canonical, and OpenRAN stacks from SynaXG, Parallel Wireless, and Fujitsu.

Chief product officer Jeff Wittich said Ampere remains focused on the cloud market but aims to expand beyond that customer base.

"What's becoming clear is that a lot of these adjacent markets that either connect to the cloud or have similar software stacks to the cloud, they're also able to take advantage of our processors, and one of those areas is telco," he said.

"I think we're kind of in the third wave of telco computing," he said. "If you go back to pre-virtual network functions, you had your big appliances, and that was the first wave, then you had the introduction of SDN, NFV, and telcos were trying to commoditise the compute and use white-box solutions," Wittich said.