SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the Which-is-larger-a-processing-core-or-a-memory-core? dept.
Qualcomm this month demonstrated its 48-core Centriq 2400 SoC in action and announced that it had started to sample its first server processor with select customers. The live showcase is an important milestone for the SoC because it proves that the part is functional and is on track for commercialization in the second half of next year.
Qualcomm announced plans to enter the server market more than two years ago, in November 2014, but the first rumors about the company's intentions to develop server CPUs emerged long before that. In fact, being one of the largest designers of ARM-based SoCs for mobile devices, Qualcomm was well prepared to move beyond smartphones and tablets. However, while it is not easy to develop a custom ARMv8 processor core and build a server-grade SoC, building an ecosystem around such chip is even more complicated in a world where ARM-based servers are typically used in isolated cases. From the very start, Qualcomm has been rather serious not only about the processors themselves but also about the ecosystem and support by third parties (Facebook was one of the first companies to support Qualcomm's server efforts). In 2015, Qualcomm teamed up with Xilinx and Mellanox to ensure that its server SoCs are compatible with FPGA-based accelerators and data-center connectivity solutions (the fruits of this partnership will likely emerge in 2018 at best). Then it released a development platform featuring its custom 24-core ARMv8 SoC that it made available to customers and various partners among ISVs, IHVs and so on. Earlier this year the company co-founded the CCIX consortium to standardize various special-purpose accelerators for data-centers and make certain that its processors can support them. Taking into account all the evangelization and preparation work that Qualcomm has disclosed so far, it is evident that the company is very serious about its server business.
From the hardware standpoint, Qualcomm's initial server platform will rely on the company's Centriq 2400-series family of microprocessors that will be made using a 10 nm FinFET fabrication process in the second half of next year. Qualcomm does not name the exact manufacturing technology, but the timeframe points to either performance-optimized Samsung's 10LPP or TSMC's CLN10FF (keep in mind that TSMC has a lot of experience fabbing large chips and a 48-core SoC is not going to be small). The key element of the Centriq 2400 will be Qualcomm's custom ARMv8-compliant 64-bit core code-named Falkor. Qualcomm has yet has to disclose more information about Falkor, but the important thing here is that this core was purpose-built for data-center applications, which means that it will likely be faster than the company's cores used inside mobile SoCs when running appropriate workloads.
Here's an older article about Qualcomm's ARM server efforts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Tuesday December 20 2016, @12:00PM
Sure your ARM processors don't have lots of registers like x86, and they don't have as wide vector registers like x86
...which are likely doing nothing except wasting die space and consuming a bit of power on a server running multiple instances of a LAMP stack or node.JS + mongoDB. The whole basis for the original ARM was the 80/20 rule-of-thumb: a complex processor spends 80% of its time using 20% of its instruction set.
Have a serialized workflow that can't run in parallel?
Then you need a workstation, or a cloud-connected supercomputer service, not a "regular" server. Servers tend to cater for large numbers of simultaneous users - i.e. a heavily parallel workflow. They also tend to be bought for a known purpose - so if you're building a cloud computing service for serial workflows, get something with fewer, higher-powered processors*. If you're hosting 1000 WordPress sites (it happens), get something energy efficient.
*Which might be ARM chips with existing [arm.com] or forthcoming [theregister.co.uk] vector units. An outfit the size of Qualcomm can build pick-n-mix ARM processors to suit their application rather than wait for Intel to produce just the right model.