The dilemma and breakthrough of ARM chip entering data center market

"Tenkine Server channel March 21 message" With the advent of AMD's first 64-bit ARM server processor, ARM will bring a new lightweight application experience to the data center. Mobile interconnection technology, cloud computing rapid development, the load becomes more and more complex, PCs, notebooks, tablets, smartphones and other various terminals are generating a large number of different types of data every day. As a result, almost all of this data has to go into the data center, which poses unprecedented challenges to the data center's responsiveness, space and energy consumption.

In fact, the load is not complex, such as web, search, large data analysis, but if a large number of light load concurrency, the data center needs to deal with the load is very amazing. As a result, data centers in the large data age are looking for a way to effectively handle a large number of parallel and lightweight workloads with lower power consumption, and the multiple cores, high parallel, and low-power features of the ARM processor meet this new requirement in the data center.

The message that ARM will enter the data center has not stopped since 2010. As Google, Facebook and other large internet manufacturers began to customize arm server, Appliedmicro and other manufacturers began arm server chip research and development, Dell and HP and other server manufacturers began testing arm server, let arm into the data center line gradually clear. October 2012, AMD cloth will be launched in 2014 64-bit ARM server chip.

The dilemma of the 32-bit ARM chip

At present, arm in the data center application still have some obstacles. First of all, ARM is only based on the 32-bit architecture, but today most server applications have shifted to 64-bit, such as hadoop,32 arm has lagged behind the times. ARM lacks software vendor support, although ARM already supports Linux systems, but supports limited application software. ARM also lacks good memory controller and cache consistency, performance is low, and difficult to deal with mainstream server applications.

AMD's launch of the 64-bit ARM processor is an architectural breakthrough for ARM's resistance in data center applications. In 2014, AMD launched the Opteron A1100 processor, code-named Seattle, to become the first company in the world to provide 64-bit ARM server processors. Seattle based on the 64-bit ARM cortex-a57 architecture, using SOC single chip design, with four or eight core, frequency of more than 2GHz, manufacturing process 28nm, the specification has been fully ahead of the current 32-bit ARM chip.

AMD's ARM processor has not only upgraded the 32-bit architecture to 64-bit, but has been fully upgraded. In terms of caching, Seattle has a 1MB L2 cache of two cores, with a maximum of 4MB. All core shares 8MB L3 cache. Memory is a huge innovation, integrated with the ability to support DDR3/DDR4 memory controller, that is, future AMD arm will support DDR4 memory, this is a significant progress. The maximum memory capacity of 128GB, the average of 16GB per core, so that AMD arm for the application of virtualization ready.

Other features include the Seattle integrated server caliber encryption and compression coprocessor, the Integrated PCI 3.0 bus Controller, 1 x8 or two x4 interfaces, integrated SATA 6G controllers, up to 8 interfaces, and 10Gb Ethernet interfaces.

Arm's Ecological circle construction

Of course, only the chip is not enough, compared to the x86 server, ARM also lacks a common, extensive software ecosystem.

In order to promote the establishment of ARM software ecosystem, AMD actively joint partners, launched a 64-bit ARM server CPU design of the comprehensive development platform, including the MICRO-ATX package evaluation Board and integrated software suite, such as standard UEFI boot environment, Based on Fedora Linux environment, Standard Linux GNU tool chain, platform device driver, Apache Web server, MySQL engine, and PHP scripting language, the Java7 and JAVA8 versions can work in 64-bit ARM environments.

Sophisticated development tools can make it easier for users to develop applications based on AMD arm, which will greatly broaden the application of AMD arm servers. To further improve arm's software ecosystem, AMD has joined the nonprofit organization Linaro, which includes arm, AMD and several software companies, and each member company will share engineers ' resources with Linaro. Since the second half of 2012, AMD has contributed 200 engineers to participate in arm software development, and vigorously promote the establishment of arm ecosystem.

In addition, AMD is one of the earliest founding members of the SBSA specification (server Base System architecture), SBSA to solve the problem of the hardware and software standards of ARM architecture server, by arm, AMD, Dell, HP, etc. As well as canonical, Citrix, Linaro, Microsoft, Red Hat, SuSE and other software companies and organizations launched the infrastructure specification, this specification of the advent of the ARM server development process simpler, accelerate the arm server from the chip, software to the end of the product deployment process, It also makes it easier for operating system vendors and ISVs to launch ARM server solutions.

The introduction of SBSA standards will help arm the ecological circle of perfection, we see the participation in the development of manufacturers covered by the server hardware and software vendors, which for the construction of arm ecosystem is a good news. The purpose of the SBSA specification is to define basic requirements for ARM Soc, and to help third party vendors design and manufacture server products based on ARM processors. SBSA also provides the ports and other underlying interfaces that are used to balance workloads between arm servers.

Microsoft's involvement in the development of the ARM server architecture has a different meaning, which helps the existing server platform applications migrate from the traditional x86 architecture to the arm platform. The implementation of ARM's standardization also contributes to the deployment efficiency of ARM servers, as the micro-servers carrying ARM chips are typically thousands of high-density deployments, and standardization helps to improve the manageability of the arm server.

AMD Arm Observation

2013 ARM processor shipments reached 8 billion, the x86 processor is 13 million, the ARM server processor has market potential. Because of this, the ARM server processor market has won the favor of a number of vendors, Appliedmicro and other manufacturers are also in the busy preparation for the listing of 64 arm processors, the internet giant Google also said it will design its own ARM server chip, Samsung is also ready to enter the market a piece.

2012, AMD acquisition of Low-power server manufacturers Seamicro, the Freedom Interconnect architecture has also been added to the advantages of AMD weight. The Freedom Interconnect architecture can connect computing, storage, and networking in a cluster, enabling each rack to exceed 1000 cores, terabytes of memory, over 10gb/s bandwidth per slot, and petabytes of storage capacity, which can significantly improve the efficiency of the ARM server, This is what other arm manufacturers do not have.

In ecosystems, AMD launched the arm of the server processor supporting the evaluation board and perfect development tools, and actively participate in the development of ARM server specifications, which will help amd more quickly promote the application of ARM server landing, at the same time to promote the entire arm of the server ecosystem to establish a positive role. In addition, AMD has a wide range of customer and partner base, including cloud server providers, internet companies, telecommunications, finance, government, etc., to help and AMD in the ARM server to further cooperation.

In addition, AMD in recent years began to transform to the SOC manufacturers, the future AMD's traditional chip business will only account for 50%, while the remaining 50% will come from the embedded, high-density servers and semi-customized products, while the ARM processor is an important part of the AMD transition strategy, AMD revealed that Its ARM server chip has a long road map. For users, AMD to arm has long-term planning and high hopes, more can win the user's confidence and recognition.

There are indications that AMD has an obvious advantage in ARM data center, so we are still looking forward to the construction of this year's arm eco-circle. But this does not mean that the arm has no resistance, Intel has developed a server based on the Atom platform, and last year, the use of 22 nm process C2000 Avoton series products. Intel says micro-architecture based on new Silvermont has reached or surpassed arm system-level chips in terms of efficiency and performance. In addition, the company will later this year launch the next Generation Atom Server SOC system-level chip, the use of 14 nm technology Denverton.

To sum up, arm into the data center Market Road is tortuous, diversified data center market to the user is a variety of choices.