News & Analysis
Slideshow: Novel server CPUs glow at Hot Chips
Rick Merritt
8/29/2012 11:31 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – In the next five years, ARM-based SoCs will grab about ten percent of the server market, according to a straw poll of engineers at the annual Hot Chips. ARM’s future in the data center was a hot topic of debate in an afternoon session dedicated to a smorgasbord of next-generation server processors.
The session included two papers from IBM, two on Sparc, one from Intel (added to this report on Sept. 30) and one on a leading ARM server SoC.
In a keynote kicking off the session, former Intel chief technology officer Patrick Gelsinger said ARM will maintain dominance in mobile systems but won’t gain a foothold in data centers. The x86 makes up more than 95 percent of all server units and 70 percent of server CPU revenues, he said.
“It’s is the only architecture that matters, and we are betting heavily on this being the computing architecture for the data center,” said Gelsinger (below) who is a division president of storage giant EMC and set to become chief executive of its VMWare subsidiary on September 1.
Gelsinger, who led design of Intel’s Pentium processor, said he doesn’t believe bullish market projections ARM-based SoCs could command a quarter of the server market in five years. “Fundamentally, I don’t think the math makes sense [because much of a server’s power is in memory and I/O components, not CPU cores] and the cost of [CPU] heterogeneity in a data center is very high,” he said.
Fred Weber, who led the design of AMD’s Opteron server chips, generally agreed. “We had better performance, lower power and the same instruction set as Intel and we couldn’t get to 25 percent,” he told EE Times after taking the straw poll as a session moderator.
Taking the opposite stance, Applied Micro gave the first look into its 64-bit ARM server SoC it aims to sample before the end of the year. “This complete server-on-a-chip will change the equation for server total cost of ownership,” said Paramesh Gopi, Applied’s chief executive.
Among other alternative server CPUs at Hot Chips, IBM showed new Power and zSeries chips. The later chip runs at a record 5.5 GHz and both CPUs make heavy use of IBM’s embedded DRAM technology. Separately, Fujitsu and Oracle described new Sparc-based server processors.
On the following pages:
Inside Applied's ARM SoC
Sparc CPUs show 64 threads, 382 GFlops
IBM packs eDRAM, hits 5.5 GHz
Last but not least--Intel
Next: Inside Applied’s ARM SoC
The session included two papers from IBM, two on Sparc, one from Intel (added to this report on Sept. 30) and one on a leading ARM server SoC.
In a keynote kicking off the session, former Intel chief technology officer Patrick Gelsinger said ARM will maintain dominance in mobile systems but won’t gain a foothold in data centers. The x86 makes up more than 95 percent of all server units and 70 percent of server CPU revenues, he said.
“It’s is the only architecture that matters, and we are betting heavily on this being the computing architecture for the data center,” said Gelsinger (below) who is a division president of storage giant EMC and set to become chief executive of its VMWare subsidiary on September 1.
Gelsinger, who led design of Intel’s Pentium processor, said he doesn’t believe bullish market projections ARM-based SoCs could command a quarter of the server market in five years. “Fundamentally, I don’t think the math makes sense [because much of a server’s power is in memory and I/O components, not CPU cores] and the cost of [CPU] heterogeneity in a data center is very high,” he said.
Fred Weber, who led the design of AMD’s Opteron server chips, generally agreed. “We had better performance, lower power and the same instruction set as Intel and we couldn’t get to 25 percent,” he told EE Times after taking the straw poll as a session moderator.
Taking the opposite stance, Applied Micro gave the first look into its 64-bit ARM server SoC it aims to sample before the end of the year. “This complete server-on-a-chip will change the equation for server total cost of ownership,” said Paramesh Gopi, Applied’s chief executive.
Among other alternative server CPUs at Hot Chips, IBM showed new Power and zSeries chips. The later chip runs at a record 5.5 GHz and both CPUs make heavy use of IBM’s embedded DRAM technology. Separately, Fujitsu and Oracle described new Sparc-based server processors.
On the following pages:
Inside Applied's ARM SoC
Sparc CPUs show 64 threads, 382 GFlops
IBM packs eDRAM, hits 5.5 GHz
Last but not least--Intel
Next: Inside Applied’s ARM SoC
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
rick.merritt
8/30/2012 1:41 PM EDT
OK, so I did not say anything about the long, detailed Intel Xeon presentation, but I figured it's been shipping awhile and people know about it already.
Sign in to Reply
Alexander Teterkin
8/31/2012 2:11 PM EDT
Rick, can you share more details on IBM POWER 7+ please. I know that you attended HC24.
Sign in to Reply
rick.merritt
9/1/2012 3:30 PM EDT
What do you want to know?
Sign in to Reply
rick.merritt
8/30/2012 5:29 PM EDT
Feeling guilty I added a page with two foils on Xeon and its new power saving technology.
Sign in to Reply
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/poconoarmchairreview
8/31/2012 7:30 PM EDT
"but to be frank it is running very hot"
No problem, just put a coffee rest on top of the chip and keep your mug warm all day for no extra cost.
Sign in to Reply
jg_
8/31/2012 9:00 PM EDT
The Core is a tiny portion of any Server, so "which core ?" is asking the wrong question.
More important are GB/s/watt numbers, and longevity and process.
Servers is a simple numbers game, there is no marketing sizzle, or packaging design froth.
That means the big players, with strong FAB backup, will continue to be the main forces here.
It is also why highly focused solutions, like IBMs, can find a place.
Sign in to Reply
Neo1
9/2/2012 10:54 PM EDT
Good to see that Oracle is continuing the Sparc line though there were fears of it's imminent demise. Sparc lost the battle for supremacy a decade back which made it easy for X86 to proliferate but these new chips could bring about some refreshing change in server market. How low can they make a server to own while still providing the reliability and throughput is the question.
Sign in to Reply
MikeSmith2011
9/3/2012 11:12 PM EDT
Looks like a study in contrasts - the Power7 designers continuing to go after the highest speed - 5+ GHz, 80MB caches, the AppliedMicro designers going after integration, efficiency and right sizing and Intel doing what it does best - leading edge fabs that give it the advantage. It appears that all three are targeting different segments of the server market.
Oh and Pat comes across as a petty partisan. Maybe he should run for political office.
Sign in to Reply