Cloud Native Server Processors
Each workload needs to proper processor for processing, some workloads need to more cores and threads and some workloads need to more power. Today, Data Centers are changing and workloads as well. Applications are moving to Cloud Native platforms and virtualization needs more density instead of processing power. Arm (Advanced RISC Machines) is going popular for cloud workloads and server products because ….
Cloud Native Workloads
Cloud Native Application is future of Cloud and virtualization, data centers needs platforms to arranging size and power challenges. ARM architecture address these issues and be able to serving AI and Cloud Native workloads better than other architectures.
Why Arm Processors?
With the introduction of 64-bit computing in the Armv8 architecture and Neoverse family, Arm has entered the server market with partners like Ampere Computing. Virtualization of hardware and the emergence of cloud computing have accelerated this transition. In our industry, we are at an inflection point, where once again multiple CPU architectures will become the norm. Customers will once again have diversity and choice for building their next generation of applications, and Arm, X86, and GPUs are leading the way.
The Arm Neoverse N1 CPU architecture is specifically designed for the data center and cloud infrastructure space. It delivers a high core count server-class SoC subsystem with the performance, features, and scalability needed to accelerate the transformation to a scalable cloud-to-edge infrastructure. It fundamentally changes the performance equation for hyperscale data centers and cloud computing, delivering far more work on far fewer watts than conventional technologies.
Ampere Computing’s Altra processors are based on the Neoverse N1 CPU architecture. Ampere took the N1 platform and integrated its own innovations to design an SoC uniquely built for applications across hyperscale cloud data centers. The increased thread counts, higher CPU frequencies, and better core densities result of the N1 Arm processors lead to:
Revolutionary Compute Performance
Neoverse N1 Arm CPUs are designed and optimized for high performance and hyperscale data centers. These CPUs deliver full frequency sustained performance and with single threaded core architecture you can run workloads with a consistent and predictable performance while achieving ideal scaling. The caching structures of these CPUs are sized for large, branch-heavy infrastructure workloads.
Predictable Performance and Scaling at Lower Cost
Customers can now run scale their workloads predictably at lower cost. Arm processors, such as Ampere’s Altra processor, single thread per core architecture allows you to run workloads with a consistent and predictable performance while achieving ideal performance scaling. The cores are wholly isolated from the noisy neighbor impact of other workloads running on the same processor. This is a benefit both for ‘scale-up’ workloads needing a very high core count, and for ‘scale-out’ workloads that benefit from multiple instances of smaller VM shapes. And predictable performance also means a more predictable bill at the end of the month. Web server, API Gateways, media encoding, AI inferencing and other workloads that are processor bound will see significant cost savings.
Better Security
Customers Can Run Their Workloads on Arm Securely
Ampere Altra processors single thread per core processor design eliminates the potential thread-security issues and provides isolation for customer workloads. This helps lower the risk due to side channel attacks. By running only a single thread per core, there is no sharing of the execution engine, registers, and L1/L2 cache between threads, which minimizes the attack surface for exploits.
Arm TrustZone, a hardware security extension technology, offers an efficient, system-wide approach to security with hardware-enforced isolation built into the CPU. It provides the perfect starting point for establishing a device root of trust based on Platform Security Architecture (PSA) guidelines. ARM TrustZone provides a secure execution environment by splitting computer resources between two execution worlds, namely normal world and secure world.
Designed For a Wide Range of Workloads
Arm server-side processors such as Ampere’s Altra are designed to meet the most demanding workload requirements for a wide variety of data center deployments.
- General Purpose Workloads – web applications, application servers
- Cloud Native Applications – Docker container-based applications
- Computationally Intensive Applications – media encoding, AI Inferencing, HPC applications
- Arm Native Mobile App Development – Android VM for developing and testing mobile applications
- In-memory caches and databases – Redis, Memcached databases, open-source databases
Altra Multi Core Server Processors
Ampere, a semiconductor startup founded and led by former Intel executive Renee James, has revealed a new 128-core, Arm-based server processor designed to take on Intel and AMD in the cloud.
Ampere server processors are a complete system on chip (SOC) solution built for Cloud Native server applications. The device supports up to 128 Arm 64 bit cores, 8 Channels of DDR4 and 128 Channels of PCIe Gen 4 interfaces.
- Up to 128 cloud optimized 64 bit Armv8.2 cores
- Up to 3.3GHz frequency of operation
- 8×72 bit DDR4 3200, ECC Support, 4TB Capacity
- 128 PCIe Gen4 lanes
- Coherent multi socket support
- I/O and Interrupt Virtualization
- Enterprise server class RAS
Summary
ARM architecture will address future data center issues such as power consumption, cooling and physical space by offering more density and lower power consumption.
Current workload and new workload will be optimized for ARM architecture and battle is begin …. .
