Processador Cavium ThunderX: 2.5 GHz, 48 Core ARMv8 SoC

[muddymind]

Cavium has announced their "ThunderX" SoC family during Computex this week as "the world's highest performing and power optimized 64-bit ARM-based server SoC." The Cavium ThunderX has 48 ARMv8 cores!

While the ThunderX isn't yet shipping, it's promising 48 ARMv8 (64-bit) cores at 2.5GHz while still being a "low-power" SoC. There's also to be cut-down versions of the ThunderX in a 24 core configuration and support for dual socket configurations using a "Cavium Coherent Processor Interconnect." DDR3 and DDR4 memory are to be supported.

Announced thus far are ThunderX_CP, ThunderX_ST, ThunderX_SC, and ThunderX_NT varieties. Various Linux distributions will be supported for the Cavium ThunderX such as Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and MontaVista. Cavium is expecting for general sampling of the ThunderX SoCs in the last quarter of this year.

More information on this promising ARMv8 server SoC can be found via the Cavium press release. For those that think this sounds a bit familiar to the now-defunct Calxeda with their former ARM server ambitions, there are some former Calxeda employees at Cavium.

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C'um catano!

Só não dizem se é o A53 ou A57 mas pela quantidade de cores devem ser A53. E espero bem que tenha pelo menos 4 canais de memória ou caso contrário fica ali um grande bottleneck...

 

[Pedro_1]

Eu não tenho bem conhecimento acerca deste tipo de hardware mas diz-me uma coisa muito rápidamente só para me situar, em comparação por exemplo a um 4770k, em %, isto significa o quê em poder de computação a mais?

 

[muddymind]

Não é minimamente comparável e são para propósitos bem distintos.

 

[Pedro_1]

Sim eu sei, era mais uma curiosidade estupida, mas achas por exemplo o quê? 3 4770k por exemplo?

 

[muddymind]

Em muitos use cases este CPU é completamente aniquilado pelo 4770k pois o IPC e clock superior do i7 não dá hipóteses.

Já em performance/Watt num web server ou sql server, por exemplo, esta solução deve deixar o i7 a milhas para trás.

Novamente, não é possível fazer comparações entre os dois produtos pois são arquitecturas muito distintas para fins muito diferentes.

 

[Pedro_1]

Exacto, o que queria saber era se defacto este processador é daqueles mesmo monstruosos entendes.

 

[Dark Kaeser]

Nope, custom cores.

This product family is based on highly efficient full custom processor cores designed by Cavium in 28nm process technology under architectural license from ARM. It is fully compliant with ARMv8 architecture as well as ARM’s Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard while bringing to market dramatic enhancements that include:

• The first ARM based SoC that scales up to 48 cores with up to 2.5 GHz core frequency
• The first ARM based SoC to be fully cache coherent across dual sockets using Cavium Coherent Processor Interconnect (CCPI™)
• The largest integrated I/O capacity with 100s of Gigabits of I/O bandwidth
• Four DDR3/4 72 bit memory controllers capable of supporting 2400 MHz memories with 1TB of memory in a dual socket configuration
• Hundreds of integrated hardware accelerators for security, storage, networking and virtualization applications.
• Standard based low latency Ethernet fabric interconnecting thousands of ThunderX™ nodes in 2D and 3D configurations and enabling fabric monitoring and SLA enforcements with awareness and policy enforcement for virtualized networks.
• Virtualization everywhere with Cavium virtSOC ™ technology – Full system level low latency virtualization solution from core to I/O.
• Best in class performance per watt and performance per dollar for the target applications

http://www.cavium.com/ThunderX_ARM_Processors.html


E segundo o Charlie da semiaccurate.com, há um motivo pelo qual este é um dos primeiros a ter mais de 8 cores:

You might have noticed that all other ARM server SoC vendors are limited to eight cores per SoC and there is a good reason for that. GICv2 currently found in all ARM v8 SoCs hard limits core count to eight, one reason why we don’t have even sillier numbers in Asia market phones and tablets at the moment. Cavium wisely didn’t use GICv2 which could be a problem seeing as it is mandatory for SBSA Level 0.

In case you didn’t see where this is going, Cavium is the first and so far only company doing GICv3 based designs, something they pushed hard to do. GICv3 raises the possible core count to, wait for it, at least 48. Actually according to the SBSA guide, Level 2 needs GICv3 (Note: Level 1 uses something called GICv2m for some reason) and ups the core count to 2^28. This is projected to be sufficient for even the highest end Asia market phones through late 2016 and server SoCs roughly forever. That is how Cavium broke the core count ceiling, they just made the first GICv3, and SBSA Level 2, device.

http://semiaccurate.com/2014/06/03/cavium-thunder-x-ups-arm-core-count-48-single-chip/

Cavium will use the latest extensions of ARM's 64-bit V8 architecture, including a new exception handler (GICv3) and virtualization spec (SMMUv2). Each custom core handles out-of-order processing of up to three instructions per cycle and has a 16 Mbyte L2 cache.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?page_number=1&doc_id=1322565&image_number=1

 

[Nemesis11]

Sem se conhecer que tipo de core é, é díficil avaliar este processador. Mais uns pontos. A Gigabyte vai fabricar duas boards para eles em Q4, mas os sistemas só devem estar à venda para o ano.
O TDP anunciado vai até aos 95W, por isso deixa de ser uma solução ultra power effecient.
Por último, esta empresa fabricava atá agora processadores Mips, relativamente parecidos, mas eram mais virados para a area de Telecomunicações.

Penso que o ponto forte poderá nem ser os 48 cores, mas sim o IO que esta solução tem.

 

[SideWalker]

This is projected to be sufficient for even the highest end Asia market phones through late 2016 and server SoCs roughly forever.

 

[muddymind]

Também achei essa "boca" priceless

 

[Dark Kaeser]

Cavium to Add Nvidia GPU Support to ARM-Based Server Chips

Adding support for Nvidia's Tesla Accelerated Computing platform will help Cavium make ThunderX more attractive to organizations in such areas as high-performance computing (HPC), scientific computing, cloud computing and data analytics, according to the company. The GPU accelerators will improve the performance and efficiency of the ThunderX SoCs.
...
"Our collaboration with Nvidia is yet another demonstration of the workload-optimized focus that Cavium is driving in the server market with ThunderX," Gopal Hegde, vice president and general manager of Cavium's Data Center Processor Group, said in a statement. "Nvidia's leadership in high-performance computing solutions for the HPC and data analytics markets is well recognized and complements Cavium's continued innovation in processors for next generation data center and cloud applications."

- See more at: http://www.eweek.com/servers/cavium...-based-server-chips.html#sthash.V0YZH2VF.dpuf


E4 Rolls Out ARM-based ARKA Servers for HPC and Big Data

Today E4 Computer Engineering from Italy announced a new series of ThunderX ARMv8-A enabled ARKA dense computing sever product line. The new Cavium ThunderX- based systems leverage the design of the proven and successful ARKA modular servers, which are well positioned to handle the requirements of specific workloads in the Cloud, Big Data and HPC applications.

Designed for power efficiency, the ARKA Series is the first production-ready 64-bit ARM server platform that integrates ThunderX along with GPUs and InfiniBand. The ARKA series is equipped with full support of the extensive software ecosystem including Linux OS, libraries, compilers and applications. It is also equipped with the following development tools: NVIDIA CUDA 6.5 (compilers, libraries, SDK) MPI libraries, GNU compilers.

http://insidehpc.com/2015/03/e4-rolls-out-arm-based-arka-servers-for-hpc-and-big-data/

 

[dead_mouse]

Sim eu sei, era mais uma curiosidade estupida, mas achas por exemplo o quê? 3 4770k por exemplo?

Não dá para comparar. Um é arquitectura risc, outro cisc.

 

[Nemesis11]

Não dá para comparar. Um é arquitectura risc, outro cisc.

Não dá para comparar, mas não é por essa razão. x86 da Intel é Risc desde o Pentium Pro e ainda mais no Pentium M.

 

[Dark Kaeser]

E com SC'15 (SuperComputing) a decorrer vão começando os anúncios

Penguin Computing Reports Customer Deployment of Tundra ES Servers Based on Cavium ThunderX Processors

The Penguin Computing Tundra ES Valkre server is a two-socket architecture in a 1-OU (1 Open Rack Unit) high and three wide form-factor, delivering optimized performance for workloads ranging from compute-intensive to cloud optimized applications. With future support for up to 1TB of DDR4 memory, up to 3 SSDs and Mellanox IB support, these Penguin Computing systems are targeted at bioinformatics, high performance data analytics (HPDA), molecular dynamics, large scale graph analytics and Ceph storage solutions.

Performance will be driven by ThunderX ARMv8 SOCs optimized for these workloads, with up to 48 high-performance custom cores, very high memory bandwidth, large memory capacity and flexible I/O subsystems.

http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire...-servers-based-on-cavium-thunderx-processors/


Inventec Unveils Server Platforms Based on Cavium ARMv8 ThunderX Product Family

The K850G3 platform from Inventec is a 2U rack mount server platform supporting two ThunderX SoCs in a dual socket configuration with up to 1024GB of DDR4 memory, flexible I/O configurations, and 12x 3.5″ HDD per chassis. This platform is optimized for workloads such as Hadoop, Spark, Cloud Compute, and other workloads requiring a balance of high computing performance with large storage capacity.

ThunderX is Cavium’s 64-bit ARMv8 SoC for next generation Data Center and Cloud Applications. Integrated 48 high performance custom cores, high memory bandwidth and large memory capacity and dual socket capabilities deliver best in class compute and memory performance for targeted cloud applications. Integrated 10/40GbE Ethernet and integrated SATA interfaces eliminate the need for external chipsets, NICs and storage HBAs thereby reducing customer cost and platform power.

http://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire...ased-on-cavium-armv8-thunderx-product-family/