Qualcomm, Microsoft announce Windows 10 on ARM

Qualcomm, Microsoft announce Windows 10 on ARM

By Unknown   03:53   No comments:

Microsoft has announced a partnership with Qualcomm to bring Windows 10 - real Windows 10, not the aborted cut-down version formerly known as Windows RT - to the company's ARM processors.

Microsoft's previous attempts at playing with non-x86/AMD64 platforms have not exactly set the world aflame. The company has long offered an embedded Windows release which supports ARM and other non-x86/AMD64 architectures, and recently made that available to a wider audience under the moniker Windows 10 IoT Core. Although Windows 10 IoT Core does indeed run on ARM-based devices, in particular the popular Raspberry Pi single-board computer, it's not Windows as most users would know it; instead it's a cut-down operating system designed to run a single application at a time, and built with the intention of winning over embedded developers from Linux and other non-Windows kernels to the Windows ecosystem.

The closest Microsoft has ever come to a true release of a consumer-centric Windows version on ARM was Windows RT, launched alongside Windows 8 on Microsoft's Surface family of tablets. While one or two hardware partners licensed Windows RT, it was soon abandoned by both third parties and Microsoft itself: Microsoft confirmed in 2015 that Windows RT would not be updated to a Windows 10-based version, and sank the final nail into its coffin a few months later by leaving Windows RT out of its so-called 'Universal' Windows Platform.

Now, though, Microsoft is having another crack of the whip, and it's convinced Qualcomm to come along for the ride. Devices built around Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon processors will, the companies have jointly announced, be able to run Windows 10 - and this time it's truly the same release of Windows you'd find on an x86/AMD64 device. Not only will it run Windows 10, mind you, but also Windows 10's considerable ecosystem of applications - including those compiled exclusively for Win32 under the x86 architecture and the Universal Windows Platform.

'To deliver on our customers' growing needs to create on the go, we announced today that Windows 10 is coming to ARM through our partnership with Qualcomm,' explained Microsoft's Terry Myerson in a blog post late last night. 'For the first time ever, our customers will be able to experience the Windows they know with all the apps, peripherals, and enterprise capabilities they require, on a truly mobile, power efficient, always-connected cellular PC.'

Technical details of how the system will work have not yet been released, but the secret lies in emulation: a translation engine will take the x86/AMD64 instructions from the operating system and the software it's hosting and translate them into ARM instructions for the host processor. It's a tried-and-tested approach which gave machines like the Acorn Archimedes and Commodore Amiga basic x86 support in the 1980s and 1990s, though one which typically comes with a considerable performance hit - something for which Qualcomm's latest chips, it is to be hoped, can compensate.

A video demonstrating Windows 10 and Adobe Photoshop running on an ARM-based device is reproduced below, with Qualcomm and Microsoft promising to launch the first units some time next year.

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Cavium and Leading Partners Showcase ThunderX® ARM-based Server Platforms, QLogic® FastLinQ Ethernet Adapters and Fibre Channel HBAs for High Performance Computing at SC16

Cavium and Leading Partners Showcase ThunderX® ARM-based Server Platforms, QLogic® FastLinQ Ethernet Adapters and Fibre Channel HBAs for High Performance Computing at SC16

By Unknown   06:35   No comments:

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 15, 2016 -- Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for enterprise, data center, cloud, wired and wireless networking, today announced the showcasing of ThunderX based workload optimized server platforms and the QLogic FastLinQ Ethernet Adapters and Fibre Channel HBAs for High Performance Computing, Data Analytics, Scale Out Storage and Hyperscale Data Centers at SC16 in the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The show Expo dates are from Monday, November 14th to Thursday, November 17th.

ThunderX is Cavium's 64-bit ARMv8server processor family for next generation high performance computing and hyperscale workloads. With up to 48 high-performance custom cores, single and dual socket capability, high memory bandwidth and capacity, and integrated hardware accelerators, ThunderX enables best-in-class ARMv8 performance per dollar and performance per watt. The ThunderX family includes multiple SKUs that enable servers optimized for compute, storage, network and security workloads in the cloud, and is widely supported by industry-leading OS, hypervisor, software tool and application vendors. ThunderX is also optimized for networking specific workloads such as Network Functions Virtualization (NFV).

From the heart of the data center, to the edge of the enterprise, and in the cloud,  QLogic® Fibre Channel and Ethernet adapters deliver an uncompromising suite of features, performance and reliability with a comprehensive suite of offerings that span 10GbE to 100GbE, and 8GFC to 32GFC (Gen6).  QLogic Fibre Channel adapters are the gold standard in SAN connectivity, trusted with running mission critical applications across the world, and the QLogic FastLinQ Ethernet adapters are the most flexible data networking solutions in the industry supporting FCoE, iSCSI and RDMA transports.  Together, these products make Cavium the industry leader in high performance network connectivity solutions.

Show Highlights and Demonstrations

Cavium executives will be available to discuss the broad range of ThunderX based production platforms, which are ideal for critical workloads such as highly parallel HPC applications, scale out storage with CEPH, Apache Hadoop for Big Data Analytics, distributed data bases such as MySQL & Cassandra, and Web Serving with NGINX. In addition to the ThunderX based ODM and OEM platforms, Cavium's QLogic® FastLinQ Ethernet Adapters and Fibre Channel HBAs will be on display at Cavium's booth #4057 including:

• QLogic FastLinQ 10/25/40/50/100 Gb Ethernet Adapters
• QLogic Enhanced Gen5 and Gen6 Fibre Channel Adapter
• ThunderX System Partners including: Aewyn, E4, Gigabyte and Lenovo

Cavium representatives will also be presenting more details on ThunderX at a number of partner sponsored events during the week.  These events include the ARM HPC User Group as well as presentations at the Red Hat and SUSE booths during the week at the Convention Center. 

To schedule a meeting at SC16, please send an email to sales@cavium.com and enter SC16 Meeting Request in the subject line.

About Cavium
Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors ranging in performance from 1Gbps to 100Gbp that enable secure, intelligent functionality in Enterprise, Data Center, Broadband, Mobile and Service Provider Equipment, highly programmable switches which scale to 3.2Tbps and Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters up to 100Gbps. Cavium processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating systems, tools and application support, hardware reference designs and other products. Cavium is headquartered in San Jose, CA with design centers in California, Massachusetts, India, Israel, China and Taiwan.

Media Contact 
Angel Atondo
Sr. Marketing Communications Manager
Telephone: +1 408-943-7417
Email: angel.atondo@cavium.com

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ARM Aims for Self-Driving Cars With New Safety-Focused SoC

ARM Aims for Self-Driving Cars With New Safety-Focused SoC

By Unknown   23:16   No comments:

The company's Cortex-R52 targets markets where safety is critical, including autonomous vehicles, robotics and health care.

ARM is looking to establish itself in the burgeoning autonomous car market with a new chip design that is aimed at addressing the high safety standards needed for not only driverless vehicles but also other areas such as industrial and medical robots.

Company officials on Sept. 20 unveiled the Cortex-R52, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design built on the company's ARMv8-R architecture that is designed to comply with a range of safety standards—such as ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL 3—that apply to situations in the growing internet of things (IoT), such as autonomous cars and robots in health care settings, where safety and security is paramount in the interaction between humans and machines.

The includes with robots that assist doctors in surgery to self-driving cars that need to understand the environment around them and immediately react to ensure the safety of the drivers and the people around the cars. In addition, the systems need to be highly secure to protect them against hackers.

"We are helping partners to meet particular market opportunities, especially in fully autonomous vehicles and robotics systems where specific functionality is required for safety-critical tasks," James McNiven, general manager for CPU and media processing groups at ARM, said in a statement.

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Like other chip companies, ARM—which is being bought by Softbank for $32.2 billion—is working to branch out beyond its core markets to gain traction in a broad range of emerging growth areas being fueled by the rapid proliferation of connected devices, systems and sensors that make up the growing IoT. ARM designs SoCs and licenses those designs to a wide variety of chip manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Samsung and Applied Micro. Most smartphones and tablets run on ARM-designed processors, but now company officials are looking to extend the reach of the architecture into other areas, from the data center to the IoT.

A growing number of ARM chip partners—including Qualcomm and Broadcom—are rolling out new products for the autonomous vehicle space. ARM also has been building up its capabilities in the IoT, including with the acquisition last year of Offspark, a company that specialized in security software for connected devices and sensors.

In a post on the company blog, James Scobie, a product manager at ARM, wrote about the growing demand for safety and security in IoT systems.

"Across multiple markets, electronic systems are becoming more complex—including automotive, industrial control and healthcare," Scobie wrote. "Vehicles are beginning to drive themselves, industrial robots are becoming increasingly collaborative, and medical systems are automated to assist with surgery or deliver medication. More of these systems are demanding functionally safe operation and requiring that functional safety be provided at a higher safety level than previous generations of systems demanded."

The Cortex-R52 architecture was created to address those functional safety needs, not only in self-driving cars, but also in increasingly automated factories that include autonomous robots that use machine learning and vision systems to enable them to work with less human control, he wrote.

"Outside the factory, robotics will be used in environments too harsh for humans, such as the nuclear industry, where there is a need to maintain precise and assured operation," Scobie wrote. "They can also be used in the medical operating theaters with remote surgery. In both areas, functionally safe operation is critical."

A key point in the Cortex-R52 is that there is what officials called hardware-enforced separation of various software tasks to make sure the code that is critical for safety is isolated. The hardware is managed by a software hypervisor. Not only does this ensure the protection of the code, but also lessens the amount of code that must be safety-certified, which makes software integration, maintenance and validation easier and development faster, they said.

"The Cortex-R52's ability to compartmentalize software provides our users with the best solution for safety without loss of determinism," Fabio Marchiò, vice president of STMicroelectronics' Automotive and Discrete Group and general manager of its Automotive Digital Division, said in a statement. "Its virtualization support simplifies the consolidation of applications and functions into a single processor, delivering a shorter integration time."

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ARM chips: how they’ve changed your life

ARM chips: how they’ve changed your life

By Unknown   02:01   No comments:

ARM microchips are used by millions of people to connect everyday devices and appliances over the internet. Arm’s designs lie at the heart of almost every smartphone sold today. Many cheaper phones use its off-the-shelf chips but for more sophisticated and expensive handsets, chipmakers often customise Arm’s technology to produce more distinctive features. With Intel backing out of the mobile processor market earlier this year to focus on servers, modems and the “internet of things”, there are few viable alternatives to Arm.

Television

Many modern televisions enable users to watch programmes and films through apps such as Netflix, which are powered by ARM-based processors. The firm’s technology is also frequently used in remote controls and set-top boxes.

Smartphones and tablets

ARM technology helps power both smartphones and iPads. E-readers, such as Kindles, and digital cameras also use the products.

Home ‘smart’ systems

Smart household appliances often use ARM-based chips to give homeowners greater control over their functions – and costs. This can include internet-connected thermostats, allowing users to control their heating via their smartphone, fridges that alert users when they have run out of groceries, and electricity metres that can help save money on energy bills.

Wearable gadgets

Fitness trackers and smart watches are becoming increasingly popular with consumers. These gadgets have relied on ARM technology for years.

Internal car systems

ARM-based chips are frequently used in cars to show drivers maps, offer voice recognition and to control music. They are also being used in prototypes for self-driving cars to power systems that trigger automatic electronic braking, for example. The technology could also be used in smart roads warning drivers about spots of black ice ahead.

Drones

Drones are becoming increasingly popular, be it families flying them in the park or photographers capturing aerial shots. They rely on tiny computers called microcontrollers and ARM estimates that a quarter of the chips made last year used its technology.

Energy efficient cities

Street lamps that dim themselves and parking meters that detect when spaces are empty are examples of sensors being used by cities to cut costs and help inhabitants. ARM believes this sector holds great potential for its business.

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Cavium ThunderX block diagrams for its four families

Cavium ThunderX block diagrams for its four families

By Unknown   23:44   No comments:

During our work with the Cavium ThunderX platform, we have had access to a single 48-core ARMv8 2.0GHz SKU. Cavium’s strategy is to target different processor models into different market. Aside from clock speed and core count, Cavium has feature-based differentiation for its different ThunderX product families. We received permission to publish information on the different SKUs and their unique features.

The four Cavium ThunderX families (ThunderX_CP, ThunderX_ST, ThunderX_SC, ThunderX_NT) have a similar base architecture. From this common architecture, each chip is tailored to its targeted application. There are a few common underpinnings but this is the basic block diagram that shows all potential components of the platform.

The ThunderX_CP family is targeted at compute workloads. These chips target public and private clouds, web caching and web serving, search, social media and similar applications. The main accelerator in this family is the vSwitch Offload Engine. If you think about the application workload this is targeted at, one will take advantage of the high speed networking, multitude of cores and RAM bandwidth.

With Cavium’s strong networking portfolio as well as 16x SATA III 6.0gbps ports (60% more than a comparable Intel single socket system), storage is an application where the ThunderX architecture is well suited. The ThunderX_ST family targets block, object and distributed file storage workloads, distributed database applications and Hadoop style workloads. It comes in 8-48 core variants and has additional hardware accelerators such as the compression engine available.

Building on the high core count and the high-end networking throughput, the Cavium ThunderX_SC is focused on applications like eCommerce web servers. Cavium includes hardware accelerators for SSL, IPSec, deep packet inspection, anti-virus and anti-malware to free CPU cycles. Cavium has IP that it uses in dedicated Nitrox III chips that it leverages here.

With Cavium’s background as a networking company, and given the specs of the ThunderX chips, one area we think the company will do well in is in the networking and SP cloud space. The ThunderX_NT targets network function virtualization (NFV) servers and the telecom clouds being deployed with a mix of high bandwidth along with hardware accelerators. Like the storage family, the networking focused family can scale from 8-48 cores.

Final Words

We have been working with a single socket Cavium ThunderX machine, the Gigabyte R120-T30 server thus far and the results have been impressive. Cavium is embracing a different approach to product differentiation than Intel. While Intel is generally focused on raw x86 performance, Cavium’s SoC design allows it to differentiate on features. This can include networking, storage accelerators and other vectors. The Cavium ThunderX family is the first ARMv8 chip we have seen, in production, that can legitimately match and outpace parts of the Intel Xeon E5 line in terms of performance.

Source:Servethehome

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Gigabyte and Cavium announce 14 ARM-based server products

Gigabyte and Cavium announce 14 ARM-based server products

By Unknown   23:59   No comments:

Gigabyte and Cavium have announced a new lineup of products that provide “a compelling, high performance alternative” to the incumbent server technologies available on the market. In total 14 new server SKUs, leveraging Gigabyte’s server expertise and Cavium’s ThunderX ARM-based platform, have been announced.

The Cavium ThunderX ARM 64-bit ARMv8 SOCs are described as workload optimised chips for data centre and cloud processing. They are available with up to 48 cores and in clock speeds of up to 2.5GHz. Gigabyte’s new servers are available in dual-socket configurations and allow for up to 2.0GHz clock speeds. Other key specs of Gigabyte’s market ready server products are:

• The highest integrated I/O capability with up to 160Gb of I/O bandwidth
• Four DDR4 72-bit memory controllers capable of supporting up to 1TB of memory in a dual socket configuration at 2133MHz
• Best in class performance per watt and performance per dollar for storage and compute applications
• A comprehensive range of designs, from cost-focused entry level solutions to high density storage and compute focused platforms

Adopters of the ‘disruptive’ new Cavium ThunderX based servers from Gigabyte will achieve similar performance but a “more compelling TCO” than using traditional x86 server systems. As well as the expected fanfare for these server products from hardware partners Gigabyte, Cavium, and ARM, industry big hitters such as Red Hat, Innodisk, SUSE and QLogic were among those to welcome the introduction of these servers.

Customers in the US, Europe and Asia are already starting to receive Cavium ThunderX based Gigabyte server products and they are available to order now. Cloud service providers have already demonstrated strong demand for the new SKUs says Gigabyte.

Source:Hexus

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