Cavium unveiled its 64-bit ARM-basedThunderX2 processor for servers in cloud data centers used for workloads such as compute, security, storage, data analytics, network function virtualization (NFV) and distributed databases.
The second generation ARM processor from
Cavium, which offers a number of on-board accelerators and advanced
capabilities, packs up to 54 cores, enabling it to deliver two to three times
the performance across a wide range of standard benchmarks and applications
compared to ThunderX. It is built in 14nm FinFET process and is compliant with
ARMv8.2 architecture as well as ARM's Server Base System Architecture (SBSA)
standard.
Key ThunderX2 features will include:
- 2nd generation of full custom Cavium ARM core: 2.4 to 2.8GHz in normal mode, Up to 3 GHz in Turbo mode; > 2X single thread performance compared to ThunderX.
- Up to 54 cores per socket delivering 2-3X socket level performance compared to ThunderX.
- Cache: 40K I-Cache and 64K D-cache, highly associative; 32MB shared Last Level Cache (LLC).
- Single and dual socket configuration support using 2nd generation of Cavium Coherent Interconnect with > 2.5X coherent bandwidth compared to ThunderX.
- System Memory: 6 DDR4 memory controllers per socket; Dual DIMM per memory controller, for a total of 12 DIMMs per socket.
- Full system virtualization for low latency from virtual machine to IO enabled through Cavium virtSOC technology.
- Integrated 10/25/40/50/100GbE network connectivity.
- Multiple integrated SATAv3 interfaces.
- Integrated PCIe Gen3 interfaces, x1, x4, x8 and x16 support.
- Integrated Hardware Accelerators: OCTEON style packet parsing, shaping, lookup, QoS and forwarding; Virtual Switch (vSwitch) offload; Virtualization, storage and NITROX V security.
Four versions of the ThunderX2 will be
offered:
·
ThunderX2_CP: Optimized
for cloud compute workloads such as private and public clouds, web serving, web
caching, web search, commercial HPC workloads such as computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) and reservoir modeling. This family supports multiple
10/25/40/50/100 GbE network Interfaces and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. It also
includes accelerators for virtualization and vSwitch offload.
·
ThunderX2_ST: Optimized
for big data, cloud storage, massively parallel processing (MPP) databases and
Data warehousing workloads. This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE
network interfaces, PCIe Gen3 interfaces and SATAv3 interfaces. It also includes
hardware accelerators for data protection/ integrity/security, user to user
efficient data movement.
·
ThunderX2_SC: Optimized
for secure web front-end, security appliances and cloud RAN type workloads.
This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE interfaces and PCIe Gen3
interfaces. Integrated hardware accelerators include Cavium’s industry leading,
5th generation NITROX security technology with acceleration for IPSec, RSA and
SSL.
·
ThunderX2_NT: Optimized
for media servers, scale-out embedded applications and NFV type workloads. This
family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE interfaces. It also includes
OCTEON style hardware accelerators for packet parsing, shaping, lookup, QoS and
forwarding.
"ThunderX2 combines our next generation core that
will deliver significantly higher single thread performance with next
generation IO and hardware accelerators to provide a compelling value
proposition for the server market and greatly expand the serviceable server
TAM," said Syed Ali, President and CEO of Cavium. "ThunderX2 will
enable flexible, scalable and fully optimizable servers for next generation
software defined data centers."
