Qualcomm is coming back to the data center market with a new, unnamed, server CPU.

The processors will support Nvidia's NVLink Fusion, which the GPU giant announced earlier this week as a way for non-Nvidia hardware to use the NVLink interconnect.

“Qualcomm Technologies’ advanced custom CPU technology with Nvidia's full-stack AI platform brings powerful, efficient intelligence to data center infrastructure,” said Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm president and CEO.

“With the ability to connect our custom processors to Nvidia's rack-scale architecture, we’re advancing a shared vision of high-performance, energy-efficient computing to the data center.”

The CPUs will also be used by Saudi Arabia's new AI venture Humain, but the scale of the order is not yet known.

Actual chip specifics are expected in "the coming months."

Qualcomm originally entered the data center market at the end of 2017, with the launch of its first server CPU, the Centriq 2400.

The chip appeared to be well received by the industry, and may have had success in the long run, but the division soon suffered after being caught in the midst of Qualcomm's wider business troubles.

The company was stuck fighting its largest customer, Apple, in court, and spent a large part of 2018 trying to stop a hostile takeover attempt by Broadcom. While that deal was ultimately blocked by the US government, it proved a costly and unnecessary distraction.

In an effort to reassure shareholders, Qualcomm began aggressively cutting non-core divisions in 2018, including most of its data center division. Workers were picked up by rivals at Ampere, Microsoft, and Apple.

A few years later, however, the market had changed. Qualcomm's core business has come under increasing pressure from its customers, with Apple developing its own modems, and others looking at in-house chips.

At the same time, Arm chips have grown in the data center, and data centers have grown more broadly as a market.

In 2021, Qualcomm sought to get back into the sector, acquiring Arm chip company Nuvia for $1.4bn. The company was founded in 2018 by several Apple veterans to target the server market, but Qualcomm initially said it would use the tech in mobile, IoT, and networking products.

That deal also had complications. Apple had previously sued one of the founders of the business, while Arm quickly sued Qualcomm over the deal - claiming that it couldn't use Nuvia's architectural license.

By 2022, Qualcomm began talking to cloud and data center companies about testing an Arm chip for the server market using Nuvia cores, but no product reached market. It has used Nuvia cores in consumer chips.

Last December, Qualcomm claimed a victory in its court battle with Arm (although the end result was a mistrial), reducing the risk of a Nuvia-based server chip.