from the from-80-column-punch-card-to-80-core-CPU dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
ARM CPU vendor Ampere announced an 80-core CPU called the Altra on Tuesday. If the core count didn't clue you in already, the Altra is aimed at data-center computing rather than home or even typical business needs. The Altra's 80 cores do not offer hyperthreading, so 80 cores here means 80 threads as well.
Before we go into too much detail about the Altra—which is currently sampling but is not yet generally available and does not have any third-party benchmarks—it's instructive to take a look slightly backward to its little sibling, the 32-core eMAG 8180.
The Altra is not Ampere's first entry into data-center ARM computing. Its last processor, the eMAG 8180, is a 32-core part running at up to 3.3GHz turbo. The eMAG 8180 is available in packet.net's c2.large.arm package, in the form of Lenovo's ThinkSystem HR330A 1u single-socket systems.
Kinvolk, a Berlin-based Linux development company, did some pretty extensive benchmarking of a single-socket eMAG 8180 system—comparing it to a 24-core AMD Epyc 7401P (24c/48t) and a dual-socket Xeon Gold 5120 (28c/56t total).
[...] Like the eMAG, the Altra does not offer SMT (Simultaneous Multi Threading), so its 80 cores mean 80 threads. Unlike the eMAG, the Altra is designed for either single or dual-socket operation—so we can expect to see 160-core Altra-powered systems later in 2020. We know that there will be multiple SKUs, with a TDP range the data sheet specifies at 45W to 210W. But we don't know their individual details.
The fine print in Altra's slide deck claims 80 cores and 180W for the Altra under test, not 210W. This may imply adjustable thermal performance configurations similar to what one might see in laptop CPUs, but at this point it's just too soon to tell. The company claims—presumably, with dual-socket builds of the 80-core SKU—the highest rack density in the industry, at up to 3,500 cores per rack.
It's important to note that these performance numbers are thin at best. Not only are they Ampere-internal, they're "projected," not real. Further, the AMD and Intel performance numbers have been artificially decreased, to account for the fact that the Altra is using binaries compiled with GCC. Meanwhile, the AMD and Intel numbers were generated with CPU-optimized compilers. This drops the Epyc down to 83.5 percent of its real performance and the Xeon down to 76 percent of its.
This isn't sketchy, exactly—it's a fairly common industry practice, and Ampere disclosed it clearly enough in the presentation. But it's likely not what many people would expect. We should point out that the only performance numbers given here are SPECrate 2017_int_base—which is an extremely narrow integer math performance benchmark.
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Marvell Announces ThunderX3: 96 Cores & 384 Thread 3rd Gen Arm Server Processor
The Arm server ecosystem is well alive and thriving, finally getting into serious motion after several years of false-start attempts. Among the original pioneers in this space was Cavium, which went on to be acquired by Marvell in 2018. Among the company's server CPU products is the ThunderX line; while the first generation ThunderX left quite a lot to be desired, the ThunderX2 was the first Arm server silicon that we deemed viable and competitive against Intel and AMD products. Since then, the ecosystem has accelerated quite a lot, and only last week we saw how impressive the new Amazon Graviton2 with the N1 chips ended up. Marvell didn't stop at the ThunderX2, and had big ambitions for its newly acquired CPU division, and today is announcing the new ThunderX3.
The ThunderX3 is a continuation and successor to then-Cavium's custom microarchitecture found in the TX2, adopting a lot of the key characteristics, most notably the capability of 4-way SMT. Adopting a new microarchitecture with higher IPC capabilities, the new TX3 also ups the clock frequencies, and now hosts up to a whopping 96 CPU cores, allowing the chip to scale up to 384 threads in a single socket.
Related: Marvell Technology to Buy Cavium for $6 Billion
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80-Core Arm CPU To Bring Lower Power, Higher Density To A Rack Near You
Ampere's Product List: 80 Cores, up to 3.3 GHz at 250 W; 128 Core in Q4
The Ampere Altra range, as part of today's release, will offer parts from 32 cores up to 80 cores, up to 3.3 GHz, with a variety of TDPs up to 250 W. As we've described in our previous news items on the chip, this is an Arm v8.2 core with a few 8.3+8.5 features, offers support for FP16 and INT8, supports 8 channels of DDR4-3200 ECC at 2 DIMMs per channel, and up to 4 TiB of memory per socket in a 1P or 2P configuration. Each CPU will offer 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, 32 of which can be used for socket-to-socket communications implemented with the CCIX protocol over PCIe. This means 50 GB/s in each direction, and 192 PCIe 4.0 lanes in a dual socket system for add-in cards. Each of the PCIe lanes can bifurcate down to x2.
[...] Previously Ampere had stated they were going for 80 cores at 3.0 GHz at 210 W, however the Q80-33 is pushing that frequency another 300 MHz for another 40 W, and we understand that the tapeout of silicon from TSMC performed better than expected, hence this new top processor.
[...] If that wasn't enough, Ampere dropped a sizeable nugget into our pre-announcement briefing. The company is set to launch a 128-core version of Altra later this year.
This will be a new silicon design, beyond Ampere's initial layout of 80 cores for Altra, however Ampere states that while they are using the same platform as the regular Altra, they have done extensive tweaking and optimizations within the mesh interconnect for Altra Max to hide the additional contention that might occur when using the same main memory speeds.
Altra Max will be socket and pin-compatible with Altra, also support dual socket deployments, and Ampere states that the silicon will be ready for early sampling with partners in Q4, and is looking to move into high volume in mid-2021.
Previously: Ampere Launches its First ARM-Based Server Processors in Challenge to Intel
80-Core Arm CPU To Bring Lower Power, Higher Density To A Rack Near You
Related: Amazon Announces 64-core Graviton2 Arm CPU
Marvell Announces ThunderX3, an ARM Server CPU With 96 Cores, 384 Threads
AMD and Intel Have a Formidable New Foe (Amazon)
Ampere Altra Performance Shows It Can Compete With - Or Even Outperform - AMD EPYC & Intel Xeon
While the talk in recent weeks has been about the performance of Apple's M1 ARM chip and then rumors there might be a 32 core chip in the pipe, there is already something much stronger: Ampere Altra has begun shipping and its flagship 80-core SoC with up to two sockets per server can easily take on the AMD EPYC 7742 "Rome" and Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 "Cascade Lake" performance across a variety of workloads. Here is our initial look at the Ampere Altra performance on Linux in our independent performance benchmarks.
[...] Prior to receiving the Ampere Altra Mount Jade server and prior to seeing the performance potential with Apple's M1 chip on the desktop side, I figured the Ampere Altra performance would be like that of prior ARM server chips where in best case scenarios may put up a good fight against Intel/AMD but not outright exceed in both raw performance and performance-per-Watt for a variety of workloads. After seeing the results I was very surprised with how well the Ampere Altra Q80-33 2P performance is against the Xeon Platinum 8280 and EPYC 7742 servers. The performance exceeded my expectations where the Ampere Altra was able to collect wins in not only the performance-per-Watt but in the raw performance as well. Aside from software not yet optimized for the AArch64 architecture, the worst case was generally the Ampere Altra coming a bit behind the x86_64 competition but even then it enjoyed much lower power consumption than the x86_64 processors tested.
Previously: 80-Core Arm CPU To Bring Lower Power, Higher Density To A Rack Near You
Ampere Announces Altra ARM CPUs with Up to 80 Cores, Going to 128 Cores by 2021
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday March 06 2020, @01:22PM (5 children)
OK, maybe just in a desktop with plenty of RAM and some giant harddisks. Should make my photo and video editing more easy … I hope.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 06 2020, @01:30PM (1 child)
Don't believe anything until you see real benchmarks.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday March 06 2020, @05:51PM
That's what the "I hope" part covered … I hope ;-)
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Acabatag on Friday March 06 2020, @03:12PM (2 children)
Then you can run Bochs on it so it will emulate an instruction set your software cab access.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SemperOSS on Friday March 06 2020, @05:57PM (1 child)
I have not tried Bochs in many years as I never had the hardware for it, really. I wonder if you could make a decent x86 processor with a distributed version of Bochs and a cluster of RPis. The reason is that my RPis seem to breed — or maybe I just cannot resist buying more for no good rea… Hey look, there's a 4GB version now! I'll be back after exercising my credit card.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday March 06 2020, @10:12PM
Clusters of Pis are almost never a good idea outside of showing off. Performance per dollar is lacking.
https://www.servethehome.com/aoa-analysis-marvell-thunderx2-equals-190-raspberry-pi-4/3/ [servethehome.com]
But if you want to do it, this just came up:
https://linuxgizmos.com/four-slot-raspberry-pi-cluster-board-starts-at-80/ [linuxgizmos.com]
https://www.notebookcheck.net/CloverPI-Combine-four-Raspberry-Pi-boards-into-one-powerful-cluster-device.456003.0.html [notebookcheck.net]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday March 06 2020, @01:35PM
I recall seeing another article that pitched the single-threaded nature of this chip as a security advantage. Probably true given the likely use cases.
Don't expect to see it in AWS though. [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 06 2020, @05:38PM
Instead of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Pournelle's_first_law [wikipedia.org] "One user, one CPU."
Now we can look forward to, "One process, one CPU".
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday March 06 2020, @05:46PM
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.
What I really look for is for mainstream computing to start gradually getting more and more general purpose cores in common hardware. And I want a pony too.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.