2014 AMD layout high-density low-power micro-server

"Tenkine Server channel March 7 News" AMD is actively challenging the development strategy to SOC chips after competing with Intel for the traditional x86 processor market. At least we from the trend, AMD's strategic transformation is still in line with the trend of development. Mobile terminals are prevalent and traditional PCs are fading. The server market is also, low power consumption high density becomes a new development trend. Entering http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/33721.html ">2014 years later, AMD and arm have been in the layout of low-power and high-density micro-server market.

Since AMD launched APU Products, Low-power energy efficiency has become one of the main directions for AMD. In the face of the enterprise-level market in the low power consumption of the actual demand for products, AMD also adopted the strategy of advance layout. Early in the 2012, AMD acquired the micro-server manufacturer Seamicro, and launched the corresponding Low-power server products. From the acquisition of Seamicro to the launch of the first ARM architecture CPU, time interval of two years. With such a large time span, AMD is clearly waiting for something.

In 2014, ARM's joint partners released the ARM server infrastructure Architecture specification, which is designed to define basic requirements for ARM SOC and help third-party vendors design and manufacture server products based on ARM processors. Participating manufacturers include Linux developers Redhat, SuSE and canonical, server manufacturers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, chip manufacturers AMD, APPLIEDMICRO, Cavium and Texas Instruments, as well as virtualization provider Citrix.

At the same time, AMD disclosed more details of the Opteron A1100 series processor based on the 64-bit ARM architecture. In addition, AMD has demonstrated a comprehensive development platform designed for 64-bit ARM server CPUs, and announced that it will contribute to the open computing project with a new micro-server design, which will be based on the AMD Hao long a series processor.

At this point, we see AMD's product release strategy with the ARM server industry standard release, AMD appears arm in the data center layout has matured, and then AMD launched the first enterprise-class 64-bit ARM processor Opteron A1100 series processor. AMD will provide a sample of the AMD Hao long A1100 series of processors in March 2014 to achieve large-scale production in the fourth quarter of 2014. AMD Hao long a series of processors with 8 core and up to 4 m of shared two-level cache, on the chip has also carried out a large number of functional integration, processing performance is powerful. The 8 core CPU supports 128GB of memory and is suitable for enterprise applications of virtualization.

Due to the bankruptcy of Calxeda, AMD into the micro-server market to reduce resistance, because HP has been in collaboration with Calxeda to develop a moonshot server based on ARM, AMD if the opportunity to persuade HP to use its 64-bit ARM processor, Competitors are only using the Dell copper system, which uses Appliedmicro x-gene 64-bit ARM chips.

On a high-density micro server, ARM's power consumption is lower and can achieve a higher deployment density than the x86 chip. 2014 is an extremely important arm server development year, ARM hardware products will appear in large numbers this year, if you can open the breach in enterprise applications, ARM server market space will be greater. In the arm to improve the standardization of hardware at the same time, arm in the software support is also steadily advancing. The mainstream Linux distribution has fully supported the ARM processor architecture.

AMD provides a development platform for the AMD Hao long a series processor code-named Seattle, which will enable users to use the industry's leading arm server CPU for software design more quickly and easily. AMD is starting to build 64-bit software ecosystems from compilers and simulators to system management programs, operating systems and applications to address the critical workflow problems in the network hierarchy and Storage data center environment. AMD Hao long a series development platform will be supported by a series of tools and software, including the standard UEFI Unified extensible Fixed Interface boot and Linux environment support based on Fedora Project.

Since 2012, AMD has worked closely with members of the Linaro Enterprise application group to accelerate the development of the ARM server ecosystem. Linaro's work in starting the architecture area includes UEFI and ACPI, as well as key core server software, such as the optimized lamp stacks developed in collaboration with Red Hat and the enterprise-class OPENJDK 8 Java implementations, which will help AMD implement hardware solutions Provides a balanced performance and low-power product for a new generation of data center server platforms.

To sum up, AMD has been in the layout of the micro-server market, with Low-power high-density micro-server, AMD can change the previous disadvantage in the PC market, we wait and see. In fact, as AMD's old rivals, Intel did not sit idly by as AMD attacked the micro-server market. Intel is also actively promoting its own SOC processor. In the SOC market, the competition between AMD and Intel continues.