ARMv8 server | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Fri, 18 Sep 2015 04:01:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png ARMv8 server | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 ARM ups expectations: ARMv8 to be in 25% of servers by 2020 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-ups-server-expectations-armv8-to-be-in-25-of-servers-by-2020/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-ups-server-expectations-armv8-to-be-in-25-of-servers-by-2020/#comments Thu, 17 Sep 2015 22:08:14 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=268284 ARM Holdings admits that large-scale deployments of servers based on chips powered by its technologies will start only in 2016 or 2017. But while there are almost no commercial ARM servers today, the company is increasing its target market share for 2020. In fact, ARM hopes that in five years from now one server out …

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ARM Holdings admits that large-scale deployments of servers based on chips powered by its technologies will start only in 2016 or 2017. But while there are almost no commercial ARM servers today, the company is increasing its target market share for 2020. In fact, ARM hopes that in five years from now one server out of four will use processors featuring its architecture.

“Last time we talked to you, we said we were shooting for 20 per cent of the server market by 2020, today we are increasing that,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president of product development at ARM, during ARM Holdings’ analyst and investor day. “With the success we have had in this space, with the customers that are rolling out our products and with the ecosystem investments that we are making, we are going for 25 per cent target share in 2020.”

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ARM is working with developers of microprocessors to design server-class chips with 8 – 48 64-bit ARMv8-A cores as well as with designers of software to address storage, cloud, web servers, Big Data/scale-out and some other servers. In fact, there are four institutions evaluating ARMv8-A technology for high-performance computing applications now and there are companies, who intend to use ARM for rather demanding tasks.

“We have initial deployments in storage, we have initial deployments in clouds, we have initial deployments in HPC, it is great, we are very happy with how that is rolling out,” said Mr. Hutton. “We are investing further. No part of the market is now restricted to us. The ARM partnership is going after every single bit of that $20 billion [total available market for servers].”

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The company is expected to introduce its higher-performing code-named “Ares” and “Prometheus” cores in the coming years, which will significantly expand opportunities for ARM in servers. The designer of processing technologies hopes that partners will introduce central processing units with more than 48 cores and specific functionality, which will help to address real-time analytics servers, high-performance computing and even enterprise servers later this decade. In fact, ARM wants to offer competitors not only for Intel Xeon E5, but also for Intel Xeon E7 platforms. What is surprising is that there are those, who are already evaluating ARM technology for enterprise-class servers.

“In the enterprise, we have a lot of enterprises that are starting to evaluate the technology internally,” said the vice president of ARM.

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This year Advanced Micro Devices, Applied Micro, Cavium, Marvell Technology Group, Texas Instruments, and Annapurna Labs are expected to start commercial shipments of ARMv8-based server-class system-on-chips. Next year four more companies are projected to offer their server-class solutions featuring ARM technology. Keeping in mind that all of these companies potentially have clients to use their SoCs, ARM hopes that adoption of its cores for servers will be pretty fast.

“There are six chip vendors in production [of ARMv8-A-based server chips] already this year, we have at least four more expected in 2016,” said Mr. Hutton. “The ARM server silicon ecosystem is very healthy.”

ARM is actively working with chip designers and contract makers of semiconductors to develop specific solutions for servers. In particular, the company is creating customized physical blocks, including microprocessor cores and interconnect technologies, to be used in server-class SoCs. ARM’s server chip roadmap includes solutions to be made using 14nm/16nm, 10nm and even 7nm FinFET fabrication processes.

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At present, only Ubuntu Server Linux supports ARMv8-A server processors, but ARM hopes that the number of operating systems and applications compatible with its architecture will rapidly increase in the coming years.

“There is a large number of additional OSes, which are at the development stage,” noted the EVP.

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ARM is traditionally very optimistic about its prospects in the server market. The company has reasons for some optimism: there are six server-class ARMv8-based chips, there is one ARMv8-supporting server operating system, there are many companies and institutions, who are evaluating the technology. But will ARMv8-compatible processor be 25 per cent of servers in just five years?

In fact, it took AMD Opteron over three years to grab about 30 per cent of the x86 server market from Intel Xeon. AMD’s chips back in 2003 – 2006 were actually faster than Intel’s and software ecosystem support for Opteron processors was robust. ARM hopes to take 25 per cent away from Intel in five years without software and major performance benefits. That’s a bold plan! Only time will tell whether it will succeed.

Even at its analyst conference ARM did not reveal specifications of its rumoured “Ares” and “Prometheus” cores.

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KitGuru Says: Will servers powered by ARMv8 chips be competitive against Intel Xeon servers due to be released tomorrow and the day after tomorrow? Intel is not standing still and it has a lot of resources to develop unbeatable server platforms. Moreover, it has a lot more financial resources than any of ARM’s partners. While ARM’s server plans seem to be optimistic, they just do not seem to be realistic.

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Qualcomm teams up with Chinese government for server CPUs https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/qualcomm-teams-up-with-chinese-government-for-server-cpus/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/qualcomm-teams-up-with-chinese-government-for-server-cpus/#comments Wed, 27 May 2015 01:32:09 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=251298 Qualcomm Technologies has reportedly signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Chinese government under which it will develop server-class microprocessors. The chips will eventually be used inside Chinese servers, which will ensure a steady revenue stream for Qualcomm. Under the terms of the document signed by Qualcomm and the authorities, they will explore the establishment …

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Qualcomm Technologies has reportedly signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Chinese government under which it will develop server-class microprocessors. The chips will eventually be used inside Chinese servers, which will ensure a steady revenue stream for Qualcomm.

Under the terms of the document signed by Qualcomm and the authorities, they will explore the establishment of a separate legal entity, reports BenchLife. The independent legal entity will be located in China and the U.S. government will not be able to prohibit the company to export its products to China. The new company will be responsible for development and sales of server processors.

Qualcomm’s server-class system-on-chips will be based on ARMv8-A architecture and Qualcomm’s own high-performance cores. High-performance general-purpose cores are a corner stone of any server and Qualcomm’s experience here is very important. The cores and some other building blocks of the chips will be developed in the U.S., whereas the final SoCs will be designed and manufactured in China. It is likely that Qualcomm’s server solutions for the Chinese market will be slightly different from microprocessors sold elsewhere.

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Chinese government supports multiple local companies who develop chips for servers and high-performance computing applications. The deal with Qualcomm is the first example when Chinese authorities decided to support a U.S.-based chip designer.

The pact with the Chinese government nearly guarantees Qualcomm a steady revenue stream and partial lack of competition from other designers of server-class ARM-based processors, such as AMD or Cavium.

Qualcomm did not comment on the news-story.

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KitGuru Says: China is gradually becoming a major microprocessor development centre. There are tens of promising CPU start-ups in the country and if the government manages to establish more joint-ventures with leading chip developers, the country will have all technologies it needs for further development of its supercomputers and other industries.

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AMD delays its first ARM-based Opteron ‘Seattle’ CPU to 2H 2015 https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-delays-its-first-arm-based-opteron-seattle-cpu-to-second-half-of-2015/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-delays-its-first-arm-based-opteron-seattle-cpu-to-second-half-of-2015/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2015 18:10:53 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=245625 Advanced Micro Devices this week confirmed that it plans to start volume shipments of its first 64-bit ARMv8-A-based Opteron microprocessor code-named “Seattle” in the second half of this year, which represents a massive one year postponement. The reasons of the delay are unclear, it is also unknown whether AMD has lost any revenue opportunities because …

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Advanced Micro Devices this week confirmed that it plans to start volume shipments of its first 64-bit ARMv8-A-based Opteron microprocessor code-named “Seattle” in the second half of this year, which represents a massive one year postponement. The reasons of the delay are unclear, it is also unknown whether AMD has lost any revenue opportunities because of it.

“We continue to sample Seattle and customers are continuing to develop both systems and software,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, in the company’s quarterly conference call with investors and financial analysts. “Relative to the production ramp for volume shipments, I think we will see that in the second half of this year.”

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The AMD Opteron A1100 system-on-chip code-named “Seattle” is AMD’s first server-class solution based on the 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture. The SoC packs up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 general-purpose cores with up to 4MB shared L2 cache and 8MB shared L3 cache as well as numerous special-purpose engines for better power efficiency and reduced CPU loading, including server caliber encryption, and compression. The central processing unit sports server-class dual-channel memory controller that supports up to 128GB of DDR3 or DDR4 ECC memory in un-buffered DIMMs, registered DIMMs or SODIMMs. In addition, the AMD Opteron A1100 processor has extensive integrated I/O, including eight PCI Express 3.0 lanes, two 10Gb/s Ethernet ports, eight Serial ATA-3.0 ports as well as now-obsolete Freedom fabric. The chips are manufacturing using an unknown 28nm process technology.

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Originally, AMD planned to ship its Opteron A1100 “Seattle” in the second half of 2014. However, in mid-2014 the company only started to sell “Seattle” software development kits to interested parties. So far only MicroStar International (MSI), SoftIron and Wiwynn (a division of Wistron) expressed interest in making servers based on the Opteron A1100. Still the chip is probably evaluated by all owners of hyperscale cloud datacenters, such as AWS, Google, Facebook and other. Those, who plan to deploy the AMD Opteron A1100, need to develop appropriate software first because the vast majority of server apps today were designed to run on microprocessors featuring x86 architecture.

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Since software development typically takes a long time, demand for AMD’s “Seattle” processor today may be negligible, which is why the company does not initiate high-volume manufacturing. Nevertheless, while “Seattle” may not be needed by the market today, the big question is whether it will face massive demand in the second half of the year from the server makers given availability of competing solutions in the 2H 2015.

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Cavium Networks is currently sampling its ThunderX server-class system-on-chip solutions with 24 to 48 custom ARMv8-A cores; quad-channel DDR3/DDR4 memory controller (up to 76.8GB/s bandwidth at 1866MHz) that supports up to 1TB of memory; integrated hardware accelerators for security, storage, networking and virtualization applications; feature-rich I/Os capabilities (10/40GbE ports, SATA ports, PCI Express) and even SMP [symmetrical multiprocessing] support. At least on paper, Cavium’s ThunderX looks very competitive. In fact, Cray, Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard have shown interest in the ThunderX. Moreover, Cray announced a plan to deliver Cray Cluster Solutions for the high-performance computing market using ThunderX. Cavium’s ThunderX will be available in high-volume in late 2015.

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KitGuru Says: It looks like the AMD Opteron A1100 “Seattle” will be mostly a software development vehicle that will hardly be deployed widely. It is highly likely that successors of the “Seattle” will not only feature more cores, but also a lot of special-purpose hardware (i.e., accelerators) and custom logic for particular customers.

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AMD: x86 will remain the central server micro-architecture https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-x86-will-remain-the-main-server-micro-architecture-going-forward/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-x86-will-remain-the-main-server-micro-architecture-going-forward/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2015 22:02:15 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=231882 Even though Advanced Micro Devices and a number of other chip designers expect ARM architecture to gain a significant part of the server market in the coming years, even AMD itself admits that the good-old x86 will remain the architecture of choice for the vast majority of servers in the future. This is exactly why …

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Even though Advanced Micro Devices and a number of other chip designers expect ARM architecture to gain a significant part of the server market in the coming years, even AMD itself admits that the good-old x86 will remain the architecture of choice for the vast majority of servers in the future. This is exactly why AMD is developing its all-new high-performance x86 architecture known as “Zen”.

“The majority of the [server] market will still be x86 for quite some time because of all of the legacy applications that exist,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts. “ARM offers a new opportunity in the dense server markets, and so we continue to look at that as a growth opportunity where new business will grow.”

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Not only all server applications are designed for x86 microprocessors, but also server chips need to offer performance, appropriate feature-set as well as input/output capabilities, the thing that many ARM-based chips just do not offer or support. AMD will integrate server-class capabilities into its code-named “K12” ARMv8-compatible cores that are in development now.

“If you look at fundamentally what is important to those server customers, it is about knowledge of the enterprise, it is about high performance compute capability, reliability,” said the head of AMD. “Those are things that AMD is uniquely capable of.”

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At present AMD’s engineers develop code-named “Zen” high-performance x86 micro-architecture that will power the company’s upcoming Opteron and FX central processing units as well as future accelerated processing units. AMD has already said that its partners are tremendously interested in competitive x86 server chips from the company. Nowadays Intel Corp. commands 98 per cent of the server chips market and therefore can dictate prices of CPUs to server makers. Given that x86 servers are not going anywhere any time soon and manufacturers of servers need processors, they need competitive offerings from AMD in order not to depend on Intel.

“Our server partners have increasingly told us they want to see AMD playing a much larger role in this business,” explained Ms. Su. “Although the design cycle is longer, this is an important vector for long-term revenue and margin expansion, and we are designing new x86 and ARM-based leadership products for this space, powered by our next-generation ARM and x86 cores.”

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KitGuru Says: Development of competitive micro-architectures for servers is an important thing for success. However, what is even more important is consistent introduction of new offerings. Intel unveils new Xeon central processing units every year. By contrast, AMD has not introduced any new Opteron CPUs for high-performance servers since 2012. The company’s current-gen Opteron chips still feature Piledriver micro-architecture that is over two years old.

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Qualcomm confirms plans for high-performance processors for servers https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/qualcomm-confirms-plans-for-high-performance-processors-for-servers/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/qualcomm-confirms-plans-for-high-performance-processors-for-servers/#respond Sat, 22 Nov 2014 01:33:26 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=222962 Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of application processors for mobile devices, this week confirmed unofficial information that it is working on high-performance system-on-chips for the emerging market of micro-servers based on ARM-architecture processors. “We are engaged with customers,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm, during a meeting with investors and financial analysts in …

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Qualcomm, the world’s largest supplier of application processors for mobile devices, this week confirmed unofficial information that it is working on high-performance system-on-chips for the emerging market of micro-servers based on ARM-architecture processors.

“We are engaged with customers,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm, during a meeting with investors and financial analysts in New York, reports the Wall Street Journal, “It will take us a while to build this business, but we think it is an interesting opportunity going forward.”

While Qualcomm did not reveal any names of its potential customers, it demonstrated a video quoting Jay Parikh, vice president of infrastructure engineering at Facebook, expressing excitement at the prospect of Qualcomm joining its potential suppliers of server chips.

“Qualcomm-based ARM servers gives us the ability to rethink the way that we have built certain parts of our infrastructure,” said Mr. Parikh.

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Qualcomm not only builds system-on-chips based on intellectual property it licenses from ARM Holdings and other companies, but develops a wide array of building blocks itself, something that should uniquely position the company on the new market.

Qualcomm designs its own general-purpose processing cores (based on ARMv7 and ARMv8 instruction sets) that offer higher performance than industry-standard Cortex-A cores offered by ARM and integrated by multiple developers of application processors that compete against Qualcomm. High-performance general-purpose cores are a corner stone of any server and Qualcomm’s experience here is very important.

The San Diego, California-based chip developer also designs its own mobile graphics processors that are integrated into its SoCs. Given the trend towards heterogeneous computing, own graphics IP will also be important for Qualcomm’s server business.

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Since the main differentiators on the market of micro-servers are going to be performance and tight integration, it is a good thing that Qualcomm is working on server-class chips in general. High-performance cores developed for servers will eventually migrate to mobile SoCs and thus smartphones and tablets. As a result, Qualcomm-based mobile devices will likely offer even higher performance for applications in the future, which is a good news for the market and a bad news for competitors of Qualcomm who do not design their own cores.

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While low-power system-on-chips for datacentres is potentially a very lucrative business, it is also going to be a very competitive segment. The market of micro-servers will be flooded by various processors based on ARM instruction-set by various makers. Among the companies developing server-class ARM-compatible SoCs are Advanced Micro Devices, Applied Micro Circuits Corp., Cavium, Marvell and many others. Qualcomm believes that the market of chips for micro-servers could generate $15 billion revenue by 2020.

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The CEO of Qualcomm did not reveal any technical details about its server efforts.

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KitGuru Says: The first rumours about Qualcomm’s server plans emerged years ago. Perhaps, the reason why the company is relatively late with its 64-bit application processors is the fact that its developers have been working on ARMv8 implementations that could scale from smartphones to tablets to datacentres.

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AMD hires former exec from Dell to head enterprise, embedded, semi-custom businesses https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/dell-hires-former-exec-from-dell-to-head-enterprise-embedded-semi-custom-businesses/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/dell-hires-former-exec-from-dell-to-head-enterprise-embedded-semi-custom-businesses/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2014 02:23:49 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=218777 Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that Forrest Norrod, a former vice president and general manager of Dell’s server business, has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s enterprise, embedded and semi-custom (EESC) business group. “Forrest is an industry veteran whose strong track record of establishing and growing businesses strengthens …

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Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that Forrest Norrod, a former vice president and general manager of Dell’s server business, has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s enterprise, embedded and semi-custom (EESC) business group.

“Forrest is an industry veteran whose strong track record of establishing and growing businesses strengthens our leadership team,” said Lisa Su, chief executive officer of AMD. “Forrest’s unique combination of engineering, business management and technical expertise at both the chip and system level make him ideally suited to lead AMD into an expanded set of markets where our differentiated technology assets provide a competitive advantage.”

Mr. Norrod will be responsible for managing all aspects of strategy, business management, engineering, and sales for AMD’s EESC business. Keeping in mind that at present AMD does not have competitive solutions for high-performance enterprise servers, the new executive will have, among other things, promote solutions for low-power servers, including Opteron processors based on ARM architecture.

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It is interesting to note that earlier this year Forrest Norrod was not exactly a fan of micro-servers. In an interview he said that he was not sure about the future of ARM-based servers because software vendors and data-center owners had not made decisions to support and use low-power server chips. As it appears, among other things, Mr. Norrod will have to convince server software developers to support ARM.

“The book's not written yet,” said Mr. Norrod in an interview. “It is not clear. If end-user demand is there, we can certainly fill it. […] It's always going to come down to software. […] There is still a brutal, brutal competition among those guys for what will be a small market at the onset. The battle will be to demonstrate the value of ARM. Is it large enough against x86 [to convince organizations] to support that second instruction set in the data center? We'll have a pretty good idea how it settles out by the middle of 2016.”

It is noteworthy that Forrest Norrod is not the first server executive from Dell hired by AMD to oversee its servers business. Back in 2003 AMD hired Patrick Patla, a former server executive from Dell and DEC. Mr. Patla helped to make Opteron popular among server makers. He left AMD for Samsung in 2012.

Prior to Dell, Mr. Norrod ran the integrated x86 CPU business at Cyrix and National Semiconductor.

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KitGuru Says: While it is definitely nice to see a new leader at AMD, it should be kept in mind that he will have to sell hardware that is significantly behind competition or products that have not become popular on the market yet. As a result, do not expect AMD’s server business to thrive because of Mr. Norrod till 2016, when AMD is expected to roll-out all-new Opteron chips based on the new micro-architecture known as Zen (or Xen?) and ARM servers finally take off (or not).

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AMD ready to build custom 64-bit ARM processors for servers https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-ready-to-build-custom-64-bit-arm-processors-for-servers/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-ready-to-build-custom-64-bit-arm-processors-for-servers/#respond Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:44:25 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=207241 Advanced Micro Devices yet has to commercially ship its first ARMv8-based system-on-chip for servers code-named Seattle. Nonetheless, the company already says that it is ready to develop semi-custom server-class SoCs for servers based on the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. The company already offers customized Opteron chips powered by its x86 cores. AMD’ Opteron 1100 “Seattle” server …

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Advanced Micro Devices yet has to commercially ship its first ARMv8-based system-on-chip for servers code-named Seattle. Nonetheless, the company already says that it is ready to develop semi-custom server-class SoCs for servers based on the 64-bit ARMv8 architecture. The company already offers customized Opteron chips powered by its x86 cores.

AMD’ Opteron 1100 “Seattle” server processor packs up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit general-purpose cores, 4MB shared L2 cache and 8MB shared L3 cache. In addition, the chip features server-class dual-channel memory controller that supports up to 128GB of DDR3 or DDR4 ECC memory, extensive integrated I/O, including eight PCI Express 3.0 lanes, two 10Gb/s Ethernet ports, Freedom fabric and eight Serial ATA-3.0 ports. The SoC also carries a set of offload engines for better power efficiency and reduced CPU loading, including server caliber encryption, and compression.

While the forthcoming “Seattle” chips are already very advanced and are designed to power new-generation cloud/hyperscale servers, AMD could also integrate customer-specific intellectual property into such processors to meet certain demands.

“There are more and more of those applications that are showing up in big data centers,” said Sean White, an engineer at Advanced Micro Devices, during a presentation at the Hot Chips conference in Cupertino, California, reports Computerworld. “They do not want traditional high-end… database type workloads. If you want to customize an SoC to exactly what you want, or to put on a piece of your [intellectual property]… you can do that in here.”

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At present AMD offers customized Opteron chips with industry-standard ingredients. AMD’s arch-rival Intel does the same, but recently it said it could build-in special-purpose hardware required by customers as well.

AMD did not say whether it already has semi-custom SoC clients in the server space. At present the company’s biggest semi-custom clients are Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp., whose latest game consoles rely on specially-designed AMD Fusion system-on-chips.

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KitGuru Says: Keeping in mind that the world’s largest server customers, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Facebook and some others, are looking forward to design their own microprocessors, it is highly likely that for Intel and AMD semi-custom chips designed-to-order will become significant parts of their businesses since they are not interested in losing major clients and therefore will offer them appropriate SoCs.

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ARM server eco-system developing slower than expected – Dell https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-server-eco-system-developing-slower-than-expected-dell/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/arm-server-eco-system-developing-slower-than-expected-dell/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2014 03:07:29 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=205916 Although many market observers expect processors based on the ARM architecture to capture a significant part of server market going forward, delays of hardware and infrastructure development reduces ARM’s chances on this market. Intel Corp. is quickly developing new low-power x86 server chips that reduce appeal of ARM for server users. “I think quite frankly …

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Although many market observers expect processors based on the ARM architecture to capture a significant part of server market going forward, delays of hardware and infrastructure development reduces ARM’s chances on this market. Intel Corp. is quickly developing new low-power x86 server chips that reduce appeal of ARM for server users.

“I think quite frankly the ecosystem is developing a little bit more slowly than expected,” said Forrest Norrod, general manager for servers at Dell, reports PC World.

Although ARM has been licensing its server-class 64-bit and 32-bit cores for some time now, no 64-bit ARMv8-based chips for servers are available commercially today. Only Apple has been selling consumer-class ARMv8-based A7 processors inside its latest smartphones and tablets for about a year now.

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Due to absence of server-class ARMv8 processors, there are no commercial servers based on ARM’s 64-bit technology on the market. Dell and Hewlett-Packard only offer prototype ARM-based servers to select customers.

“The opportunity for ARM servers is smaller than it used to be than if ARM had been earlier. […] Whether or not companies are willing to invest to maintain x86 and ARM server architectures in one infrastructure is an open question,” said Mr. Norrod.

Server software used today was designed with x86 processors in mind, so companies looking to deploy ARM-based servers should ensure that there are programs that support their workflows as well as ARM processors.

Dell remains committed to ARM-based servers, but their success depends on availability of chips, competitive advantages of x86 processors and availability of software.

“We’re continuing to play close attention to it. We’re moderating end customer interest. We’ll continue to stay engaged with the ARM ecosystem … in time for end customer adoption,” said Mr. Norrod.

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KitGuru Says: While ARM remains confident that it can capture a part of micro-server market, to do so it will need to offer certain indisputable advantages compared to Intel’s chips. Given the lack of commercial ARM-based server chips, it is impossible for server users to find out whether ARM SoCs actually provide any advantages at all.

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AMD begins to sell ARMv8 Opteron ‘Seattle’ kits to software developers https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-begins-to-sell-arm-based-opteron-seattle-kits-to-software-developers/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/amd-begins-to-sell-arm-based-opteron-seattle-kits-to-software-developers/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2014 22:59:16 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=205497 Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday began to sell server software development kits based on its multi-core AMD Opteron A1100-series code-named “Seattle” server microprocessors that employ the ARM Cortex-A57 cores. At present AMD is the only provider of 64-bit ARM server hardware with complete ARMv8 instruction set support to foster the development of the ecosystem for …

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Advanced Micro Devices on Thursday began to sell server software development kits based on its multi-core AMD Opteron A1100-series code-named “Seattle” server microprocessors that employ the ARM Cortex-A57 cores. At present AMD is the only provider of 64-bit ARM server hardware with complete ARMv8 instruction set support to foster the development of the ecosystem for efficient storage, Web applications and hosting.

The AMD Opteron A1100 is a highly-integrated system-on-chip with up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 64-bit general-purpose cores with up to 4MB shared L2 cache and 8MB shared L3 cache; the chip also carries extensive offload engines for better power efficiency and reduced CPU loading, including server caliber encryption, and compression. The microprocessor features server-class dual-channel memory controller that supports up to 128GB of DDR3 or DDR4 ECC memory as un-buffered DIMMs, registered DIMMs or SODIMMs. In addition, the AMD Opteron A1100 processor has extensive integrated I/O, including eight PCI Express 3.0 lanes, two 10Gb/s Ethernet ports, Freedom fabric and eight Serial ATA-3.0 ports. The chips will be made using 28nm process technology.

The AMD Opteron A1100 development kit is packaged in a microATX form factor and includes the quad-core AMD Opteron A1100-series processor, 16GB of DDR3 memory, PCI Express x8 and x4 ports, eight Serial ATA ports, UEFI boot environment and so on.

amd_opteron_arm_armv8_devkit_1

The kit comes with Linux environment based on Fedora technology from the Red Hat-sponsored Fedora community, standard Linux GNU tool chain, including cross-development version, platform device drivers, Apache web server, MySQL database engine, and PHP scripting language for developing robust Web serving applications, Java 7 and Java 8 versions to enable developers to work in a 64-bit ARM environment.

“The journey toward a more efficient infrastructure for large-scale datacenters is taking a major step forward today with broader availability of our AMD Opteron A1100-series development kit,” said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, general manager and vice president, Server business unit, AMD. “After successfully sampling to major ecosystem partners such as firmware, OS, and tools providers, we are taking the next step in what will be a collaborative effort across the industry to reimagine the datacenter based on the open business model of ARM innovation.”

The kit is available for $2999 (€2239, £1775).

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KitGuru Says: AMD is one of the first companies to support server 64-bit ARMv8 software development kit to programmers. That said, it is clear that ARM-optimized server software is pretty far away…

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