ARM Challenging Intel in the Server Market: An Overview
by Johan De Gelas on December 16, 2014 10:00 AM ESTOverview of the Competitors
Let's sum everything up in one big table.
ARM/Intel SoC 2015 Comparison | ||||||||
SoC | Intel Xeon-D | Intel Atom C2000 | AppliedMicro X-Gene 1 (X-Gene 2) |
AMD A1100 | Cavium Thunder-X | Broadcom Vulcan | ||
Architecture | Broadwell | Silvermont | Storm (ShadowCat) | A57 | Thunder-X | Vulcan | ||
Cores Socket |
8 single |
8 single |
8 (16) sngle |
4-8 single |
16-48 dual |
20? | ||
Max. CPU Clockspeed | GHz | 2.4GHz | 2.4GHz (2.8GHz) |
2GHz | 2.5 Ghz | 3GHz | ||
Process technology | Intel 14nm | Intel 22nm | TSMC 40nm (TSMC 28nm) |
GF 28nm | GF 28nm | TSMC 16nm | ||
L1 Cache | 32KB I 32KB D |
32KB I 24KB D |
32KB I (*) 32KB D (*) |
48KB I 32KB D |
78KB I 32KB D |
32KB I 32KB D |
||
Decode | 4 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | ||
Max. IPC (int) | 5 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | ||
Exe Ports | 8 | 4 | 8 | 8 | 4? | 6 | ||
Max. FP Performance | 2x 256 bit | 1x 128 bit | 2x 128 bit | 2x 128 bit | 2x 128 bit | 2x 128 bit | ||
OoO buffer | 192 | 32 | >100 | 128 | 40 | 180 | ||
L2 Cache | 8x 256KB | 4x 1MB | 4x 256KB? (*) | 4x 1MB | 16MB | 20x 256KB | ||
L3 Cache | 8MB? | - | 8MB | 8MB | - | ? | ||
Max. RAM | 128GB | 64GB | 128GB | 128GB | 1TB | ? | ||
Memory Bus Width | 2x 64-bit | 2 x 64-bit | 4x 64-bit | 2x 64-bit | 4x 64-bit | 4x 64-bit | ||
DRAM (best) | DDR4- 2133 |
DDR3- 1600 |
DDR3- 1866 |
DDR3- 1866 |
DDR4- 2133 |
DDR4- 2133 |
||
TDP (top SKU) | 45W | 20W | 40W (25 W?) |
25W | +/- 95 W | ? | ||
Available | Q2-Q3 2015 |
Early 2014 |
Now (Q2 2015?) |
Q1-Q2 2015 |
Q1 2015 |
Q3 2015 |
(*) Deduced from Ganesh's article about the Helix SoCs
These are paper specifications of course, so they should be interpreted with a grain of salt. It looks like the AMD A1100 should top the Atom C2000 and go after the low end of the Xeon E3. AMD's Opteron A1100 is already available, but the current development kits do not hit the clock speed and performance targets.
The Thunder-X single-threaded performance in "traditional workloads" might only be at the level of the Atom C2000, but scale-out and network/crypto acceleration could give some remarkable results in certain workloads. The Cavium SoC is the hardest to predict and will show a very variable performance profile as it also incorporates many very specialized hardware accelerators. The Thunder-X reference servers are announced and should be available in the coming weeks.
The X-Gene is currently the widest ARM architecture with extra hardware acceleration mostly focused on networking. The X-Gene TDP was great on paper (25W when announced) but there are many indications (40W TDP) that AppliedMicro really needs the 28nm X-Gene 2 to be truly competitive in the performance/watt battle arena. The X-Gene 2 should be available around Q2 2015.
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jhh - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
SPARC and Power have had trouble keeping up with Moore's law, as neither sold enough to amortize R&D to push out innovation at the same rate as Intel. As Moore's law comes to an end, this will stop being a unique Intel advantage. It just might be too late for both of them. One can see the pressure on IBM, with their opening the Power architecture in similar ways to ARM. Both POWER and SPARC have to keep up to porting drivers to their Unix implementations, while the device manufacturers either write drivers for Linux or don't get volume. I just can't see either POWER or SPARC being cost effective over the long run. And, when others see the same thing, they aren't going to be excited about porting application software to those platforms.ARM needs to have a good performance/power and performance/cost ratio to get people excited to buy something other than Intel. They are certainly getting enough volume from the low-end to make investment on high-end parts. So far, I'm not excited enough to recommend any ARM proof-of-concept though.
Kevin G - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
IBM always had a licensing model similar to ARM with PowerPC cores. The only thing really new here is that IBM is licensing out there flagship POWER chip in the same manner. Despite Intel having a process advantage, IBM was able to keep up in performance. (The 45 mm based 8POWER7 was generally faster than the 32 mm 10 core Westmere-EX.) There will always be a market for top performance but you are correct that sustaining on just that customer base is unwise.IBM does realize that their software licensing model to subsidize hardware R&D was not sustainable. So while you can't run AIX, you can get a POWER8 box for less than $3k now.
OreoCookie - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Really, just $3000? Wow, how times have changed, I remember ~12 years ago that a single Alpha CPU cost that much (the department I was working for had a workstation fail, fortunately under warranty, because otherwise they would have had to pay for 2 new CPUs and new RAM worth about 15,000 German Marks).Ratman6161 - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
"The general lower cost of Linux and open source software" While it's true that the cost of a Linux OS including support is lower than an equivalent Windows OS, in the larger scheme of things the cost of Windows and even VMware becomes little more than background noise in the total cost of operations. Try pricing out an Oracle DB for example and you find that the cost of that software dwarfs the price of the hardware it's running on as well as whatever the OS is costing. Ditto with most "enterprise software".lefty2 - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
Intel has another big advantage over ARM, which everyone seems to have forgotten about, and that is software compatibilty. 64-bit ARM server software is still a work in progress. The stuff that's being worked on at the moment is open source. Once that's finished you still have to convince clients to convert their proprietary software to ARM.JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
Don't you think that the open source software that has been/is ported now is enough? Apache/PHP/MySQL, Memcached and Hadoop...that is a massive server market. And there is little stopping Microsoft to invest in ARM software too. Just VMware might be a bit tricky, but I don't think the software is a problem.Kevin G - Wednesday, December 17, 2014 - link
Actually VMware has said some less that flattering about ARM. Xen is the main hyper visor on ARM for the moment.goop666666 - Thursday, December 25, 2014 - link
Yeah, recompiling is so very hard. Essentially what you're saying is that Intel is for legacy systems and software that is poorly written. That is a large enough market, but doesn't apply to hyperscale deployments, which are the future.gostan - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
great article by Johan as always.but the argument is muted. we have heard this tune before.
the hardware might be cheaper. the power bill might be cheaper. wait until you see the software maintenance cost. custom software needs 'custom' pricing.
besides, arm has no cutting edge fab process to back them.
JohanAnandtech - Tuesday, December 16, 2014 - link
You do not need expensive software to create a server market these days. Just look how many webservers are running the LAMP stack.