With the arrival of upper efficiency Arm primarily based cloud computing, plenty of focus is being placed on what the assorted rivals can do on this area. We’ve lined Ampere Computing’s earlier eMag merchandise, which really got here from the acquisition of Applied Micro, however the subsequent technology {hardware} known as Altra, and after a couple of months of teasing some excessive efficiency compute, the corporate is lastly saying its product listing, in addition to an upcoming product due for sampling this yr.
Ampere’s Altra is a realized model of Arm’s Neoverse N1 enterprise core, very like Amazon’s Graviton2, however this time in an 80-core association. Where Graviton2 is designed to swimsuit Amazon’s wants for Arm-based situations, Ampere’s objective is basically to provide a better-than-Graviton2 answer to the remainder of the massive cloud service suppliers (CSPs). Of the businesses which have dedicated to an N1 primarily based design, thus far on paper Ampere is publically the largest and quickest on the books.
The Ampere Altra vary, as a part of right this moment’s launch, will supply components from 32 cores as much as 80 cores, as much as 3.Three GHz, with quite a lot of TDPs as much as 250 W. As we’ve described in our earlier information objects on the chip, that is an Arm v8.2 core with a couple of 8.3+8.5 options, gives help for FP16 and INT8, helps Eight channels of DDR4-3200 ECC at 2 DIMMs per channel, and as much as Four TiB of reminiscence per socket in a 1P or 2P configuration. Each CPU will supply 128 PCIe 4.Zero lanes, 32 of which can be utilized for socket-to-socket communications carried out with the CCIX protocol over PCIe. This means 50 GB/s in every path, and 192 PCIe 4.Zero lanes in a twin socket system for add-in playing cards. Each of the PCIe lanes can bifurcate right down to x2.
| Ampere 1st Gen Altra ‘QuickSilver’ Product List |
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| AnandTech | Cores | Frequency | TDP | PCIe | DDR4 | Price |
| Q80-33 | 80 | 3.Three GHz | 250 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q80-30 | 80 | 3.Zero GHz | 210 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q80-26 | 80 | 2.6 GHz | 175 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q80-23 | 80 | 2.Three GHz | 150 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q72-30 | 72 | 3.Zero GHz | 195 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q64-33 | 64 | 3.Three GHz | 220 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q64-30 | 64 | 3.Zero GHz | 180 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q64-26 | 64 | 2.6 GHz | 125 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q64-24 | 64 | 2.Four GHz | 95 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q48-22 | 48 | 2.2 GHz | 85 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q32-17* | 32 | 1.7 GHz | 58 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| Q32-17 | 32 | 1.7 GHz | 45 W | 128x G4 | Eight x 3200 | ? |
| *With Four TiB DRAM Installed | ||||||
I have to credit score Ampere right here. This is by far the best product naming scheme I’ve ever seen. Intel might be taught 1,000,000 issues from this naming scheme alone. The ‘Q’ stands for QuickSilver, the codename of the underlying SoC, adopted by a core rely and a frequency.
Previously Ampere had said they had been going for 80 cores at 3.Zero GHz at 210 W, nonetheless the Q80-33 is pushing that frequency one other 300 MHz for an additional 40 W, and we perceive that the tapeout of silicon from TSMC carried out higher than anticipated, therefore this new prime processor.
It’s price performing some primary metrics on energy effectivity. If we take the TDP as solely the ability for the cores, and do some math on Watts per Core, then GHz per Watt, the highest Q80-33 SKU scores 1.06, across the center of the pack (most CPUs rating 0.95-1.25 GHz/W). The spotlight of the listing by this metric is the Q64-24, providing essentially the most frequency for the least energy: 1.62 GHz per Watt.
Also, simply because we’ve got the numbers, AMD’s large Rome CPUs devour about Three W per core at full load, and run at roughly 3.Zero GHz on all CPUs. Altra, by comparability, makes use of 2.6 W per core on the Q80-30. These Altra CPUs…
