After nearly a decade of ecological construction, arm high-performance CPU has finally emerged in the server market. Amazon and Marvell have applied arm architecture to the cloud. Huawei Hisilicon has also launched Kunpeng series servers based on the design of neutral N1. Ampere computing launched the first cloud native server CPU last year, which has shown the advantages of performance and power consumption.
Recently, ampere disclosed in the sharing of the 2022 strategy and product roadmap update thatampere will release the 5nm CPU ampereone with self-developed core this year
Renee James, chairman of ampere computing
Jeff Wittich, chief product officer of ampere computing, told leifeng.com (official account: leifeng.com): "*ampereone is also based on ARM Isa. * customers expect to have CPUs with higher performance, better energy efficiency and better scalability every year. The development and launch of self-developed core CPUs can help us focus on the needs of customers and meet their corresponding requirements."
In other words, after being recognized by the seven largest data center customers in the world, including Microsoft azure, Alibaba cloud and Tencent cloud, ampere will further improve its CPU performance and power consumption. As a representative of arm high-performance server CPU provider, Ampere's further improved products also mean that the gap between arm server CPU and x86 server CPU will further expand.
Rely on high performance, low power consumption and cloud native to seize the x86 server market
Compared with X86 server CPU, arm architecture server CPU is characterized by higher performance and lower power consumption
According to the data given by ampere, its CPU performance is three times higher than that of traditional x86 processors, and its performance power consumption is nearly four times higher than that of traditional x86 processors.
Compared with X86 server CPU, the ampere Altra series can use 50% of the energy consumption and provide 200% of the performance.
The key to the high performance of Altra CPU is the high number of cores.
Jeff Wittich explained, " at present, our 128 core products are leading in the industry, twice as many as other CPUs. Only one single thread is running on each core, and the entire core is running at a consistent high frequency. at the same time, we provide a dedicated cache with large capacity and low latency for each core, and connect all high-performance cores together with the help of intelligent high bandwidth mesh interconnection structure, breaking the traditional bottleneck that CPUs generate diminishing returns when demand increases. Also Designed with advanced DDR and PCIe technologies, it can achieve maximum capacity and expand memory and i/o bandwidth. It can effectively avoid mutual interference between users, provide excellent scalability, and finally achieve maximum utilization. "
Another key point is that the ampere Altra series is designed for cloud computing. As a cloud native CPU, ampere removes the unpopular feature of the traditional architecture in order to optimize power consumption and area, and achieves a single core power consumption that is more than 67% lower than that of the traditional CPU
"One of the biggest disadvantages of traditional x86 is that they are not specifically designed for the data center, nor for the cloud and cloud services. In the past, they were used in the data center because there was no better choice other than x86 CPU." Jeff Wittich。
The advantages of cloud native processors can be embodied in that, due to the high number of cores, each core only runs a single thread, which can show good performance and security. There is no need to worry about the performance degradation caused by the increase of workload and pressure, and it can also resist the interference of many users.
Altra CPU also has better scalability than x86 CPU, which is also very useful for cloud computing customers.
Further widen the performance gap with X86 CPU
Renee James, chairman of ampere computing, said, "we have applied for hundreds of patents on the performance and functions of our products. The latest product ampereone adopts ampere computing self-developed core, based on 5nm process, and supports pcigen5 and ddr5. The new products have begun to send samples, and we are looking forward to customer feedback."
"Our upcoming self-developed core, ampereone, is also based on ARM Isa. The microarchitecture is very different from neoverse provided by arm, but it can not provide too much information at present." Jeff Wittich revealed that " the self-developed core ampereone can be perfectly compatible with our current products Altra and Altra Max cloud native processors. from the perspective of users, the optimization they have implemented for the ampere altra/ Altra Max can also be perfectly applicable on our ampereone. In addition, we have also cooperated with compilers, such as GCC and llvm, to further ensure the adaptability of all our products."
Although there is no more specific information, Ampere's CPU will further improve performance and power consumption, which will undoubtedly further widen the gap with X86 CPU.
However, arm's high-performance CPU has another obvious weakness, that is, software ecology.
Ecology is still the CPU short board of arm server
To improve the arm high-performance computing ecosystem, both software and hardware need to be continuously improved. In addition to cooperating with the cloud platform and ODM and OEM of hardware, ampere also has developed kits with partners such as Gigabyte and Linghua technology, which are used in multiple scenarios such as artificial intelligence and automatic driving to expand the application landscape.
Ampere emphasizes that its high-performance, low-power edge cloud native processor can also reduce the power to an ultra-low 40W (32c) or lower than 70W (64c). This means that the power consumption of the ampere computing 32 core processor is 4.6 times lower than that of the equivalent x86 CPU, which can open up new territories that other competitors cannot enter, such as cruise's autonomous vehicle.
Of course, ampere is also exploring the direction of AI and hybrid quantum computing.
In addition, ampere hopes to attract more developers by setting up the ampere Developer program developer program, provide more than 130 applications in the developer community, and return and update them on the website every day, from databases to AI reasoning solutions.
"Through regression testing, we can ensure our extensive adaptability and ensure the effect of high performance on the basis of adaptability." Jeff Wittich said.
However, in any case, the arm high-performance computing ecosystem chosen by ampere needs to be jointly built by more enterprises and developers to truly compete with X86 CPU in the server market
Statista, a global comprehensive data database, predicts that by 2028, the market size of arm architecture processors in data centers and clouds will reach US $58billion, more than 14 times that of 2019, and the market share will also increase from 5% in 2019 to 25%.
Arm still has a way to go in the cloud market of the data center.