Ampere Altra - the world's first 80-core ARM processor

California company Ampere introduced the industry's first 80-core server ARM-based processors on 64-bit architecture Ampere Altra .

For several years, experts have predicted that the ARM platform will compete with x86 in data centers, but this does not happen. At the end of 2019, Intel dominates there with a share of 95.5% , AMD - 4.5%.

However, the new ARM processor in the SPECrate 2017 integer benchmark shows higher performance than the fastest 64-core AMD EPYC or the top-end 28-core Xeon of the Cascade Lake family. This is a serious application (although the benchmark results are a bit “twisted”, see below).

The main advantage of ARM is energy efficiency, which, by definition, x86 processors cannot match because of the architecture. The 80-core Ampere Altra has a TDP of 45-210 watts, a clock frequency of 3 GHz.

Ampere believes that one thread per core instead of two contributes to higher security, since this design better protects individual cores from attacks on third-party channels such as Meltdown and Specter.





The processor is designed for server applications such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, databases, storage, telecommunications stacks, border computing, web hosting and cloud applications. Especially for machine learning applications at the hardware level, support for the data formats FP16 (half precision numbers) and INT8 (single-byte representation of an integer) is implemented. There is also hardware accelerated hashing of AES and SHA-256.



Microchips are manufactured at the TSMC factory using the 7 nm process technology. The first CPU samples have already been sent to potential customers, and mass production is planned to begin in mid-2020.

Ampere CEO and former Intel President Renée James founded Ampere Computing in October 2017 on the foundation of the bankrupt Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (1979–2017), which also designed ARM server processors. In particular, in 2011 she introduced the 64-bit X-Gene platform based on ARMv8-A.

James is currently combining the executive director and chairman of the board of directors of Ampere Computing with the position of vice chairman of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which advises the president of the United States.

I wonder how successful the new attempt will be to bring ARM processors to the server market.

“We released the processor with the largest number of cores on the market,” says James. “Now we sent it [for testing] to some of the largest cloud service providers in the industry ... I think people will be surprised.” [Replacing previous technologies] always comes something new. And if not from an existing company, then from a new one. It’s very interesting to work on what I consider to be the next stage in the development of the industry. ”

There was a lot of talk about 64-bit ARM server chips in the past years when AMD and the aforementioned Applied Micro tried to produce similar processors. But these companies have failed. AMD closed its ARM project, and Applied Micro assets were soldMacom. In 2017, the Carlyle Group bought the ARM processor division from her. The deal was closed at the end of 2019, and James took over as CEO of the new company, leaving his position as chief operating officer at Carlyle Group.


Two Ampere server platforms: Mt. Jade and Mt. Snow

Ampere Altra's single-threaded cores and “dense energy-efficient servers” that can be built on such CPUs will allow customers to “maximize the number of services that they can deploy in the cloud,” the company said.

Ampere Altra processor based on ARM Neoverse N1 platform. Positive feedback about the new servers was received from engineers from Microsoft Azure, Oracle, Canonical, VMware, Kinvolk, Packet, Lenovo, Gigabyte, Wiwynn and Micron, all of which are cited in a press release.


Mt. Server Jade for two processors (160 cores): data analytics, databases, web

The company says that the software is ready to work with Ampere Altra: “The most important thing now is that if you look at all levels, OS level, everything from Linux to BSD and Windows all support ARM, ”said Jeff Wittich, Senior Vice President, Ampere Products. - On virtualization, we have support for Kubernetes, Docker, VMware and KBM. Everything is supported there. At the application level, everything that works in the cloud today is already working with us. ”


Mt. Snow : , , ,

• 
  
  • 80 ARM v8.2+ 64 3,0  Sustained Turbo, ARM v8.3 v8.4
  • I- L1 64 K, D- L1 64 , L2 1  , 32  (SLC)
  • SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) (128 )
  • mesh-
• 
  
  • 8x 72- DDR4-3200
  • ECC, Symbol-based ECC, DDR4 RAS
  • 16 DIMM 4
• 
  
  • (GICv3)
  • I/O (SMMUv3)
  • RAS (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability)
• 
  
  • 128 PCIe Gen4
    
    • 8 x8 PCIe + 4 x16 PCIe/CCIX Extended Speed Mode (ESM) 20/25 / ( )
    • 48 32 x2
  • 192 2P
  • 4 x16 CCIX
• – 0°C +90°C
• 
  
  • CPU: 0,80 , DDR4: 1,2
  • I/O: 3,3 /1,8 , SerDes PLL: 1,8
• – , Turbo Gen2,
• – 4926- FCLGA
• – FinFET 7

Jeff Wittich says that in tests, the Ampere processor shows a result 4% better than AMD's fastest EPYC processor, and consumes 14% less power. We are talking about a 64-core EPYC
7742 processor with a TDP of 225 W and a cost of $ 6950. This is the most powerful in the EPYC 2 processor family on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. The family was introduced in August 2019.





Wittich also cited a 28-core Xeon processor from the Cascade Lake family. The Ampere Altra processor surpassed it "2.23 times in performance and 2.11 times in energy efficiency." Here, the indicators were compared with the 28-core Xeon Platinum 8280 (205 W), and energy efficiency was calculated based on one core.

Reportedly, in the integer benchmark SPECrate 2017, the Ampere Altra processor shows a result greater than 259. InThis results in the table below the peak performance of the ASUS RS720A-E9 (KNPP-D32) Server System (2.20 GHz, AMD EPYC 7601) and the ASUS RS500A-E10 (KRPA-U16) Server System 2.25 GHz, AMD EPYC 7742.

However, Ampere applied to AMD results, the coefficient is 0.85 due to the use of the AMD64 compiler package to compile the benchmark code compared to GCC 8.2, which it used itself, since the AMD C / C ++ compiler produces more optimized code than GCC for ARM.

Despite such “twists” of the benchmark, Ampere Altra looks very impressive in terms of performance and energy efficiency. About 3500 processor cores can be “packaged” in a standard 42U server rack with a power supply of 12.5 kW, resulting in savings from the calculation of watts per core.





And this is just the beginning. Jeff Wittich said that in a year another product, codenamed Mystique, will appear on the market, in which Ampere will further increase the number of cores.

Mystique will support the same connector, so motherboard replacement is not required. The next generation of Siryn SoC is planned for 2022.



In recent years, we have observed several attempts to release server-side ARM processors from different companies: Broadcom / Cavium / Marvell, Calxeda, Huawei, Fujitsu, Phytium, Annapurna / Amazon and AppliedMicro / Ampere. Most of these attempts were unsuccessful. But there are signs that the situation is changing. In December 2019, Amazon rolled out production servers with 64-core Graviton2 ARM processors.Is a system-on-a-chip on the same core as the ARM Neoverse N1 core. In some tests, ARM instances (M6g and M6gd) performed better, and sometimes much better than x86.

In November 2019, it was reported that U.S. startup Nuvia raised $ 53 million in venture capital funding . The startup was founded by three leading engineers who were involved in the creation of processors at Apple and Google. They also promise to develop server processors that will compete with Intel and AMD. According to available information , Nuvia designed from scratch a processor core that can be built "on top" of the ARM architecture, but without obtaining an ARM license.

All this indicates that RISC processors can find application not only in mobile devices, but also in servers, as well as in desktop computers and laptops. By the way, there are rumors that future Apple MacBook laptops will also come out on ARM-processors .



In fact, the latest iPad Pro models with A12X ARM processors are almost as good as 15-inch MacBook Pros with Core i7 and Core i9 processors, so such an upgrade will become quite logical.

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