We recently published news about the 128-core ARM Altra Max processor . Also on Habré they mentioned server ARM chips that are used by Amazon. But, as it turned out, other companies also produce ARM-based server processors.
So, at the end of March this year , the Marvell ThunderX3 processor was announced , this is a new generation of server chips from Marvell. The manufacturer has increased the number of cores in its processors from 32 to 96, leaving support for SMT4, which makes it possible to process four threads with one core. Accordingly, such a chip is capable of processing 384 streams.
According to company representatives, SMT4 is a guarantee that the conveyors of individual cores are loaded efficiently. At the same time, new processors are able to work perfectly not only in multi-threaded, but also single-threaded computing. As for the single-socket configuration, 64 PCI Express 4.0 lanes are supported , in the two-socket configuration the number of PCIe 4.0 lanes is increased to 128. In the case of two-socket configurations, the processors are connected via 16 PCI Express 4.0 lanes.
Unlike other suppliers of ARM chips for servers, Marvell does not use the ARM Neoverse N1 architecture, but a custom ARM8.3 +. There is no information about the cache subsystem yet, but it is known that the latency level is constant and does not depend on the relative position of the cores. And the memory subsystem is similar to Graviton2 and does not include an eight-channel DDR4 controller supporting frequencies up to 3200 MHz.
The company will release several versions of ThunderX3 with heat packages from 100 to 240 watts. According to the developers, the energy efficiency of the new product is one third more than AMD Rome (EPYC 2 generations). The new technological process is TSMC 7 nm.
Source . Dual-socket configuration with previous generation Thunder X2 processors.
Chip performance is 25% higher than previous generation ThunderX2 processors. This is if we talk about multi-threaded operation. In single threaded, performance is increased by 60%. At the same time, the novelty copes with integer operations three times faster than the representatives of the previous generation, and with floating point calculations - five times.
The new chips will be used to solve tasks for processing large amounts of data . Thanks to the features of the chips, they will allow you to run more virtual machines in the case of single-processor systems.
Judging by the test results, the new chips outperform competitors from Intel and AMD in a number of indicators. But these are internal corporate tests, which, as you know, should be treated with caution.
Processors are still not available to third-party experts, so there are no independent test results yet. The company is going to release new processors by the end of 2020. Additional information will be provided in August. Well, the company has already announced that it will release a new generation of its server processors in two years.
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