Revolt against single architecture AMD data center X86 and Arm Bridge

Not long ago, the voice of AMD and arm in the industry quickly spread, and October 29, 2012, Beijing, AMD company office in a more fully prepared conference call, will this cooperation to the clean. AMD announces that it will design a variety of 64-bit ARM processors for cloud servers, data server markets, and provide an operational support platform for different workloads by consolidating X86, arm, and APU processors.

Although the schema changes or presents a mixed trend, the new processors listed in 2014 still retain the original name--opertron Hao long.

New trend of data center in low energy consumption and low cost cloud era

In a sense, cloud computing can be regarded as a large-scale, integrated platform to provide services, while the data center is the physical carrier of this large-scale platform, since talking about scale, it is decided that the data center is a huge investment base of cloud computing. Too many cases of super large data centers have shown us the space, the huge demand for energy, bandwidth, and so on, and the rapid development of the processor manufacturing process and the micro-instruction set have made the processor "extraordinary" computing power, and it is true that this high-performance processor benefits HPC and other computing-intensive workloads, But as a front-end server to provide service capabilities?

I've heard more than one user, one vendor complaining that the bottleneck of the front-end access server is network rather than computational power, the rapid development of the common architecture is making the cask effect more apparent, making computing and bandwidth more unbalanced, and allowing users to spend hundreds of of dollars on the processor with less than half of their capabilities, But the energy consumption is hardly reduced.

At this time, many people think of a solution--arm.

1991 Arm Company was founded in Cambridge, UK, the main selling chip design technology authorization. At present, the use of ARM technology intellectual property (IP architecture) of the microprocessor, that is, we usually say arm microprocessor, has been all over the industrial control, consumer electronics products, communication systems, network systems, wireless systems and other products market, based on ARM technology microprocessor applications occupy 32-bit RISC More than 75% of the market share of microprocessors and the strength of the arm model is that it has more than 100 partners worldwide. ARM uses the transfer permit system, the partner produces the chip. Its biggest characteristic is the structure is open, the chip cost and the energy consumption double low, this is precisely the arm technology to infiltrate our life each aspect important reason, almost has become our life important tool's smartphone and the tablet computer, almost all is based on the ARM processor.

Why arm?

In spite of the 64-bit X86, 2005 release of the industry's first dual-core processor and other innovations to make AMD's business, its market share has given X86 founder Intel a sense of crisis, and directly contributed to its tick Tock (alternate architecture and manufacturing process for two years) Update of the market strategy. But after the advent of the core architecture, AMD's technical reserves have not been able to provide a sustainable competitive advantage, AMD market strategy has gradually shifted from technology innovation, performance advantage to more core, better cost-effective, although this has become a point of view of the cloud computing era, but from the product itself, the market performance and even the share price, AMD needs better innovation to get itself out of the doldrums.

Because of the three characteristics of openness, energy consumption and cost, ARM has become the new hope of data center in cloud era, and also become an opportunity for AMD products and business update.

Over the past 20 years, the choice of industrial x86 servers has been showing a "one for all, a single architecture fit all" situation, which is also because of the more similar workload in the past. On the October 29 AMD conference call, the official PPT demonstrated that the ARM architecture can bring the energy-efficient revolution of data center, power and cost, its source is the current integration of it and business, increasing mobile devices and perfect network, these new business models drive high parallel workloads, While high parallel load drives the construction of large scale data centers, the huge data centers need better energy efficiency ratio, while the high energy efficiency ARM architecture can achieve ultra-high density computing cluster.

With more than 10 years of experience in the server CPU, shipped more than millions of systems, with 64-bit processors, and more importantly, the current need for business model breakthroughs, from simple X86 follower to become, or once again become the industry's innovation leader.

Obviously AMD became ARM's ally, in the server industry began to shake off, against a single architecture of the battle, and arm also need AMD such have industry experience, channel and manufacturing capacity of comrade-in-arms.

seamicrofreedom--a catalyst to form a supercomputing architecture

Server as the core components of it, but also has the most complete industrial ecological chain, AMD and arm cooperation in fact beyond the will be released in 2014, the "Hao Long" processor. Although markets have not been plain sailing in recent years, a number of useful market attempts have been made, including in memory, IO, key business, design theory, platforms and tools, especially in the early 2012, when the Seamicro is a catalyst for the supercomputing architecture.

In the case of the server, arm is a drug with side effects.

While energy consumption and cost are enjoying great advantages, ARM's original design is to meet the needs of embedded systems, and on the server, the ARM processor can not adapt to similar large CPU network connections, in bringing excellent computing costs, if each ARM processor is connected to the network, which will bring side effects- More expensive networks, if similar to existing server mode.

Seamicro Freedom Fiber Architecture solves this problem, simply put, the fiber architecture turns the CPU into a cluster, connecting the cluster to the network, thus clearing the arm's side effects. This is also the result of Seamicro's ongoing commitment to micro-server development.

AMD promises AMD Seamicro Freedom fibre architecture will be implanted into industrial standard supercomputing networks, which have been deployed for more than 2 years in similar environments and have accumulated over millions of hours of manufacturing experience. The AMD Seamicro Freedom Fibre architecture will be a catalyst for supercomputing architectures by connecting the different cores within the server, ignoring X86 or arm's CPU industry standards.

AMD Cloud Vision: Open Cloud, hybrid architecture for different workloads

Just as the ARM processor is more suitable for the front-end Access Layer service, although the future of cloud computing will be open, but the choice is more diverse, AMD planning its cloud vision-different processors and combinations are more suitable for different workloads, customers choose the right, so there is another advantage, amd a good card- APU has also become part of its cloud strategy.

Three typical load support platforms can be formed through the latest apu,amd of marriage and integration:

Arm+x86: Can cover cloud computing and super large-scale data center, for streaming, mobile network HPC, analog computing, large data analysis, Web Access and other load;

APU: Can support media cluster, for virtual desktop, streaming media, remote gaming, video coding and other loads;

X86+apu: can support the operation cluster, aiming at the artificial intelligence load;

From a market point of view, AMD has gone a coup. The next question is ...

When did the 64 arm ecosystems arrive?

If the IT system is regarded as a person, the hardware is the body, the software is the mind and the soul, after the conference call, when asked "when will the 64 arm ecosystems come?" , Andrew Feldman, global vice president of AMD and general manager of data Center server Solutions business, has shown a cautious affirmation.

He said that the software ecological cooperation, the need for time, the new arm architecture Hao Dragon will be delivered in 2014, the software provider will work with OEM manufacturers to accelerate the ecological environment.

Another blog from Red Hat's chief arm architect Jon Masters that the ARM architecture processor will become increasingly important as an alternative architecture in a new era of high-energy, high-density, and massively computationally efficient computing. ARM has energy-efficient DNA. In fact, the ARM architecture design team always takes energy efficiency into consideration when making trade-offs.

In addition, "Red Hat engineers have been working with AMD for several months, and we are ready to support the next generation of Fedora Project 64-bit ARM architecture server processors." As you can imagine, a lot of planning is needed to provide operating system support for a new architecture. Fedora has provided long-term support for 32-bit ARM architecture processors, including support for Fedora 15 to the latest ARMV7 32-bit server processor, and we have had a successful experience in implementing this process. In the lab, we not only make the original components for our software, but also can run the test program with various simulation environments. In the coming months, when the actual hardware is developed, we will work with more extensive community partners and ecosystem partners such as AMD to provide full support for the 64-bit ARM architecture in the Fedora Project. ”

In a sense, red hat can be regarded as the leading enterprise of open system software supplier, and its optimistic and open attitude will make the software ecology more rapid to form the support of ARM architecture.

Conclusion: Worth looking forward to 2014

In the access to information, the author saw the arm market data shown below:

Mobile phone processor 90% market share;

Netbook processor 30% market share;

Tablet PC processor 70% market share;

Competitor: Intel.

The end of these three words clearly make AMD and arm marriage more logical, and in the market, the data listed above will be updated over time, server processor market share will become the new territory of the Amd/arm Alliance.

After all, I remember the aforementioned competitor's market expectations for Low-power/Micro servers accounted for 10% of the overall server market, which is not a small number anyway.

Recently, AMD Greater China Server Sales Director Yong Yonglin interviewed, said AMD in the future of the server in the road, there will be x86, will have arm, there will be APU. He summed up the current situation and future of AMD server with 10 words----the reality is very bony, the future is very plump. ”

It seems that 2014 is a year worth looking forward to.