1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

News AdvancedMicro launches first 64-bit ARM server chip

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by brumgrunt, 27 Apr 2012.

  1. brumgrunt

    brumgrunt What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    16 Dec 2011
    Posts:
    1,009
    Likes Received:
    27
    brumgrunt, 27 Apr 2012
    #1
  2. iwod

    iwod What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    22 Jul 2007
    Posts:
    86
    Likes Received:
    0
    So is it AdvancedMicro or AppliedMicro ?
     
    iwod, 27 Apr 2012
    #2
  3. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,129
    Likes Received:
    6,717
    Bah! Applied, not Advanced. My fault - I was thinking of the AMD (which *is* Advanced Micro) story I was writing afterwards... Fixed now!
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 27 Apr 2012
    #3
  4. r3loaded

    r3loaded Minimodder

    Joined:
    25 Jul 2010
    Posts:
    1,095
    Likes Received:
    31
    Is this a custom implementation of the ARMv8 architecture, or based on an ARM reference design?

    Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2
     
    r3loaded, 27 Apr 2012
    #4
  5. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,129
    Likes Received:
    6,717
    Every ARM chip in existence is based on an ARM reference design - it's just a question of whether it's hard macro or soft macro. In this case, it's soft macro - so yes, it's about as custom as an ARM chip gets.
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 27 Apr 2012
    #5
  6. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    30 Jul 2010
    Posts:
    1,082
    Likes Received:
    10
    unless there's a significant performance difference when running 64 bit ARM, i think i'd rather just use PAE. PAE in linux doesn't really have any noteworthy performance differences, but you're not limited to 4gb.
     
    schmidtbag, 27 Apr 2012
    #6
  7. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,129
    Likes Received:
    6,717
    Existing ARM server chips - by which I mean the Cortex-A15 - don't need PAE, 'cos they use 48-bit memory addressing (despite still being 32-bit chips.) Each chip supports up to 1TB.
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 27 Apr 2012
    #7
  8. KarlFreund

    KarlFreund What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    27 Apr 2012
    Posts:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Let's be clear here: this is an announcement of a working FPGA, not a working chip. But is great to see that the 64-bit ecosystem can now begin the work to get ready for real silicon when it DOES become available. Make no mistake: ARM is coming to the datacenter, and there are indeed plenty of 32 bit applications and workloads (ever hear of Java?) that will start the move 1st (with help from Calxeda!)

    -Karl
     
    KarlFreund, 27 Apr 2012
    #8
  9. Combatus

    Combatus Bit-tech Modding + hardware reviews Lover of bit-tech Super Moderator

    Joined:
    16 Feb 2009
    Posts:
    2,761
    Likes Received:
    89
    Gareth, I have to admit I just love the way you make hardware virtualisation extensions and heavy integer mathematics sound refreshing and interesting!
     
    Combatus, 27 Apr 2012
    #9
  10. dicobalt

    dicobalt What's a Dremel?

    Joined:
    21 Mar 2009
    Posts:
    169
    Likes Received:
    2
    ARM on a server seems like throwing rocks at a tank. If your hardware and processing demands are that low you would be better served by virtualizing it on an existing machine and save the cost of expensive proprietary ARM servers.
     
    dicobalt, 27 Apr 2012
    #10
  11. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,129
    Likes Received:
    6,717
    I'm going to choose to assume you meant that seriously. :p
    You're missing the point: the servers these are aimed at do lots of small tasks at the same time; in the power envelope of 16 x86 cores, you can get 512 ARM cores - and thus run 498 more threads. (Numbers pulled from you-know-where for illustration.) Doesn't matter how much you virtualise, if you've got sixteen cores then you're only running sixteen threads simultaneously (modulo tricks like Hyper Threading.)
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 27 Apr 2012
    #11
  12. r3loaded

    r3loaded Minimodder

    Joined:
    25 Jul 2010
    Posts:
    1,095
    Likes Received:
    31
    Yes, and an ARM server like this with (relatively) low performance per core but a high core count makes it especially suitable for tasks that are easy to parallelize but simple to compute such as a web server. Each individual request is straightforward to handle, but handling 500 of them at a time is a lot easier on 500 cores than time-slicing them across 16 cores.

    For computationally intensive work, Xeons obviously still remain the best choice.
     
    r3loaded, 28 Apr 2012
    #12
  13. ch424

    ch424 Design Warrior

    Joined:
    26 May 2004
    Posts:
    3,112
    Likes Received:
    41
    No, there's three ways of licensing: hard macro (the customer gets a silicon layout that they can send to a foundry), RTL (the customer gets source code they can plug into their own cell libraries and turn into a hard implementation themselves, what you call "soft macro") and architecture license (eg Qualcomm make their own CPUs from the ground up, just using the ARM instruction sets). So to answer r3loaded's question, yes, this is probably a custom implementation, not derived from a reference design.

    LPAE is 48-bit physical addressing.
     
    ch424, 28 Apr 2012
    #13
  14. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

    Joined:
    4 Dec 2007
    Posts:
    17,129
    Likes Received:
    6,717
    You're quite right - for some reason I completely forgot about architecture licensing.
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 28 Apr 2012
    #14
Tags: Add Tags

Share This Page