Generally speaking two bay or four bay NAS devices are dominated by ARM SoC while higher capacity unit for SOHO or enterprise devices are using x86 Intel Atom or Core processor. Atom was originally designed for Netbooks with its low power usage. However, the first Atom processor is just not fast enough to really deliver a good computing experience. Luckily for Intel, Atom processor found its way into the NAS systems where combining the lower power consumption than typical desktop/laptop CPUs and higher performance than ARM SoCs yield a much better experience for Home/SOHO NAS devices.

While Intel dominated the high-performance NAS market, the other big x86 player, namely AMD, has not shown any interest until now. The QNAP TVS-x63 marked the world's first NAS featuring AMD processor. AMD's new strategy is targeting the markets with high profit return and the company is returning to the server market. NAS, by extension, is like a small scale server, so it makes sense to see AMD putting their processors into these devices.

I wonder why it took AMD so long to decide to put its processor into NAS. While NAS market is not as big as desktop, laptop, or smartphones, it is growing market. Our computing usage has shifted to mobile and portable devices where people are moving away from the desk. As a result, there is a greater demand for cloud storage and centralized data storage. This is where NAS steps in where it is no longer for small business and enterprise market but can be a very useful tool for home users.