AMD announces first ARM based server SOCs

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

They are using 64 bit ARM A57 based cores:

http://techreport.com/news/25977/amd...n-a1100-series
http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74...373&highlight=
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7724/i...-opteron-a1100

The AMD Opteron A1100 Series processors support:

4 or 8 core ARM Cortex™-A57 processors
Up to 4 MB of shared L2 and 8 MB of shared L3 cache
Configurable dual DDR3 or DDR4 memory channels with ECC at up to 1866 MT/second
Up to 4 SODIMM, UDIMM or RDIMMs
8 lanes of PCI-Express® Gen 3 I/O
8 Serial ATA 3 ports
2 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports
ARM TrustZone® technology for enhanced security
Crypto and data compression co-processors

The AMD Opteron A-Series development kit is packaged in a Micro-ATX form factor and includes:

An AMD Opteron A1100 Series processor
4 Registered DIMM slots for up to 128GB of DDR3 DRAM
PCI Express® connectors configurable as a single x8 or dual x4 ports
8 Serial-ATA connectors
Compatibility with standard power supplies
Ability to be used stand-alone or mounted in standard rack-mount chassis
Standard UEFI boot environment
Linux environment based on Fedora, which provides developers with a rich set of tools and applications
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 provide developers to work in a 64-bit ARM environment

[jimbouk]

DDR4 support is finally on it's way. Sure it's an ARM server, but it's got to start somewhere!

[DanceswithUnix]

8 cores (not threads), 8MB of L3 cache. 2-4x the performance of Opteron X series (Jaguar 4 core).

So, one of these coupled to GTX650 graphics running SteamOS please.

It doesn't say just how integrated the ethernet channels are on there, might have to split the PCIe into 4+4 and use one half of that to drive consumer grade ethenet (10Gbe isn't compatible with 1Gbe for those that haven't come across it).

[shaithis]

So, now we see if Microsoft will flesh out Windows RT with a desktop and a lot more application support or start losing market share to Linux.

And will this force VMWare and Microsoft to follow Citrix and release ARM compatible hypervisors?

I foresee quite a shake-up in the serer segment.

[scaryjim]

So, now we see if Microsoft will flesh out Windows RT with a desktop and a lot more application support or start losing market share to Linux.

Seems unlikely, this is a server chip not a desktop/consumer chip. They're unlikely to lose server share to linux as it's a major project to transfer a production server chain from Windows to Linux. People aren't going to switch platform just because AMD has made an ARM server that runs linux. AFAIK the AMD roadmap doesn't have any ARM chips on the consumer side.

Of course, what this does mean is that their semi-custom branch will now have proven ARM designs to work with, and it's conceivable that semi-custom customers might want to make devices using ARM cores, Radeon graphics and running Android/ChromeOS/SteamOS/Other linux variant. That'd need better Radeno linux drivers, but any customer investing in semi-custom silicon might have the resources to do a custom driver too...?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There was noise AMD might do a ARM based consumer chip from one of their own people(it is posted in the other thread somewhere).

Edit!!



http://www.anandtech.com/show/7724/i...-opteron-a1100

It seems the SOC is passively cooled.



http://uk.hardware.info/news/38110/n...50-and-arm-a15

I suspect performance/watt should increase a decent amount.

The X1250 also has far less cache overall.

Edit!!

Another picture from AMD:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfF4VlWIEAACm8t.jpg:large

[shaithis]

Seems unlikely, this is a server chip not a desktop/consumer chip. They're unlikely to lose server share to linux as it's a major project to transfer a production server chain from Windows to Linux. People aren't going to switch platform just because AMD has made an ARM server that runs linux. AFAIK the AMD roadmap doesn't have any ARM chips on the consumer side.

Servers are where people are looking to save power though. If the power savings are significant over x86 offerings it will make people evaluate the software they are running. Whether that's a file server, database or provisioned desktop for a thin client.

[Bonebreaker777]

Wonder how these new highly efficient servers, which are clearly very tempting to be scaled massively, will compare to high performance sector demands.
Many slower cores = less faster cores

Wonder if it would be feasible to design CPUs (not sure it is available right now on any serial produced chips) to massively slow down or shut down automatically.

I read somewhere that administrators can turn off parts of servers upon demand but that requires human input and turn back on (or even waking up from "sleep") takes long.

Just a thought. Like a sistem that can run 1 or even 1024 cores depending on demand and would consume energy accordingly.

[DanceswithUnix]

Wonder how these new highly efficient servers, which are clearly very tempting to be scaled massively, will compare to high performance sector demands.
Many slower cores = less faster cores

Wonder if it would be feasible to design CPUs (not sure it is available right now on any serial produced chips) to massively slow down or shut down automatically.

I read somewhere that administrators can turn off parts of servers upon demand but that requires human input and turn back on (or even waking up from "sleep") takes long.

Just a thought. Like a sistem that can run 1 or even 1024 cores depending on demand and would consume energy accordingly.

I think modern CPUs do pretty much all that already, to the point they even shut down part of the cache under light load.

The fun here might be the floating point performance. x86 is tuned quite highly for that these days, but most server tasks don't care and are mostly integer. I notice the rather rough performance guide AMD give is integer only, and although these 64 bit chips are supposed to have better floating point than the older 32 bit ARM parts I don't know just how good/bad that really is.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Anandtech forum thread on this is grating to read.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

ARM announces ARM server standard:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7721/a...tform-standard

It looks like the AMD ARM based servers follow this standard.

[fteoOpty64]

Since Intel is clearly NOT interested in making ARM chips themselves, then I would like to see a HSA system based on ARM and AMD-X64. Like a 4X ARM A57 and 4X SteamRoller cores maybe plus 4CU of GCN 1.1 gpu cores as well. Such a chip would make a great home server that is also a client and a NAS box all in one. In the era of real heterogeneous multi-propcessing, we would expect to see a crazy mix of cores allowing the OS to power down cores that are idle.
In fact, it is not crazy to see a "hUMA slot" that could then allow graphics cards with 4GB GDDR5 RAM to sit in the hUMA channel extending the DDR3 main ram, hence speeding up graphics even more ....