Today Cavium announced ThunderX2, its second generation of
Workload-Optimized ARM server SoCs. ThunderX2 targets high performance volume
servers deployed by Public/Private Cloud and Telco data centers and high
performance computing applications. It is optimized for key Data Center
workloads such as compute, security, storage, data analytics, network function
virtualization and distributed databases.
The
Cavium ThunderX2 will expand the market opportunity for ARM-based server
technologies by addressing demanding application and workload requirements for
compute, storage networking and security,” said Simon Segars, CEO, ARM.
“ThunderX2 demonstrates Cavium’s ability to deliver a combination of innovation
and engineering execution and the new product family increases the momentum for
server deployments powered by ARM processors in large scale data centers and
end user environments.”
ThunderX2 will deliver two to three times the performance
across a wide range of standard benchmarks and applications compared to
ThunderX. It also significantly expands the market reach of the ThunderX family
of processors by targeting applications that require high single thread
performance such as web search, graph analytics, a variety of enterprise
applications such as massively parallel processing (MPP) databases, data
warehousing and enterprise HPC applications such as computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) and reservoir modeling.
ThunderX2 will deliver comparable
performance at a better total cost of ownership compared to the next generation
of traditional server processors. ThunderX2 is the second generation Workload
Optimized processor from Cavium. It is based on the latest ARMv8-A architecture
and built on a 14nm FinFET process node. It is fully compliant with ARM’s
Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard.
Key ThunderX2 features will include:
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2nd generation of full custom Cavium ARM core o Multi-Issue,
Fully OOO. o 2.4 to 2.8 GHz in normal mode, Up to 3 GHz in Turbo mode. o >
2X single thread performance compared to ThunderX.
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Up to 54 cores per socket delivering 2-3X socket level
performance compared to ThunderX
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Cache o 64K I-Cache and 40K D-Cache, highly associative. o 32MB
shared Last Level Cache (LLC).
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Single and dual socket configuration support using 2nd
generation of Cavium Coherent Interconnect with > 2.5X coherent bandwidth
compared to ThunderX
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System Memory o 6 DDR4 memory controllers per socket. o Dual
DIMM per memory controller, for a total of 12 DIMMs per socket. o Up to 3200MHz
in 1 DPC and 2966MHz in 2 DPC configuration. o Up to 3 TB of memory in dual
socket configuration.
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Full system virtualization for low latency from virtual machine
to IO enabled through Cavium virtSOC technology
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Next Generation IO o Integrated 10/25/40/50/100GbE network
connectivity: Multiple integrated SATAv3 interfaces, Integrated PCIe Gen3
interfaces, x1, x4, x8 and x16 support.
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Integrated Hardware Accelerators: OCTEON style packet parsing,
shaping, lookup, QoS and forwarding, Virtual Switch (vSwitch)
offload, Virtualization, storage and NITROX V security.
The ThunderX2 family of processors
includes FOUR workload optimized processors targeting different workloads:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
Cavium’s ThunderX2 SoC family is
supported by a comprehensive software ecosystem ranging from platform level
systems management and firmware to commercial Operating Systems, Development
Environments and Applications. Cavium has actively engaged in server industry
standards groups such as UEFI and delivered numerous reference platforms to a
broad array of community and corporate partners.
It is a honor to be able to rely on such a close business
relationship with a partner like Cavium, we designed and delivered our own
solutions based on Cavium ThunderX SoC for a while now, with extreme
satisfaction in terms of performances, support and overall results. We can’t
wait to get our hands the next gen SoC as we are confident it will provide an
additional boost to an already strong and tested product line.” Cosimo
Gianfreda, CTO E4 Computer Engineering. (Know more)
