"ARM chips also have a shot in 2017, particularly Applied Micro’s X-Gene 3 which ranks highest in performance among the current crop. Cavium’s ThunderX has the most cores, but they are relatively small, low performance ones that keep overall performance below X-Gene 3.
“ThunderX 2 is significantly better, but it will probably be ThunderX 3 before they can really compete with Intel,” Gwennap said."