Investigating Cavium's ThunderX: The First ARM Server SoC With Ambition
by Johan De Gelas on June 15, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- IT Computing
- Enterprise
- Enterprise CPUs
- Microserver
- Cavium
The Small Cavium ARM Core
Cavium has not talked much about ThunderX's internals. But since the launch of the Octeon back in 2006, Cavium has continued to build further upon this microarchitecture. Given the similarities in specifications and what we have read and heard so far about the ThunderX, it is safe to assume that the internal architecture of ThunderX is an improved version of the Octeon III.
The Cavium core can probably only sustain 2 instructions per clock, with a very simple 4 issue back-end. To put this in perspective: Intel's latest "Broadwell/Skylake" designs can sustain 5-6 instructions per clock and issue up to 8 integer instructions (load/store included). While we are not sure whether there have not been significant changes to the backend, the basic pipeline has remained the same (9 cycles instead of 8). That means that the design might do well in branch intensive low IPC situations, which are very common in lots of server applications. But the consequence is also that it is very unlikely that the Cavium will be able to reach the turbo speeds that the Xeons reach (3.5 GHz and more).
To that end we'll test this in great detail: is the Cavium ThunderX core more like an ARM Cortex-A53, or is it a bit more muscular?
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Daniel Egger - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
I could hardly disagree more about the remote management of SuperMicro vs. HP. Remote management of HP is *the horror*, I've never seen worse and I've seen a lot. It's clunky, it requires a license to be useful (others do to but SuperMicro does not have such nonsense), the BCM tends to crash a lot (which is very annoying for a remote management solution), boot is even slower than all other systems I know due to the way they integrate the BIOS and remote management on the system and it also uses Java unless you have Windows machines around to use the .NET version.For the remote management alone I would chose SuperMicro over most other vendors any day.
JohanAnandtech - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
I found the .Net client of HP much less sluggish, and I have seen no crashing at all. I guess there is no optimal remote management client, but I really like the "boot into firmware" option that Intel implemented.rahvin - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Not only that but Supermicro actually releases updates for their BCM's. I had the same shocked reaction to the HP claim. Started to wonder if I was the only one that thought supermicro was light years ahead in usability.I should note that Supermicro's awful Java tool works on Linux as well as windows. Though it refuses to run if your Java isn't the newest version available.
pencea - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
All these articles and yet still no review for the GTX 1080, while other major sites have already posted their reviews of both 1070 & 1080. Guru3D already has 2 custom 1080 and a custom 1070 review up.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
It'll be done when it's done.pencea - Wednesday, June 15, 2016 - link
Unacceptably late for something that should've been posted weeks ago.Meteor2 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Will anyone read it though? Your ad impressions are going to suffer.Ryan Smith - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Maybe. Maybe not. But it's my own fault regardless. All I can do is get it done as soon as I reasonably can, and hope it's something you guys find useful.name99 - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Give it a freaking rest. No-one is impressed by your constant whining about this.pencea - Thursday, June 16, 2016 - link
Not looking to impress anyone. As a long time viewer of this site, I'm simply disappointed that a reputational site like this is constantly late for GPU reviews.