Cavium and Microsoft Collaborate to Accelerate Cloud Services with ThunderX2™

Cavium and Microsoft Collaborate to Accelerate Cloud Services with ThunderX2™

By Unknown   04:10   No comments:

SAN JOSE, Calif. March 8, 2017 – Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), announced today that they are collaborating with Microsoft on evaluating and enabling a variety of cloud workloads running on Cavium’s flagship ThunderX2 ARMv8-A Data Center processor for the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

The companies are also demonstrating web services on a version of Windows Server developed for Microsoft’s internal use running cloud services workloads on ThunderX2. The server platform is based on Microsoft’s Project Olympus – Microsoft’s next generation open source hyperscale cloud hardware design.  The demonstrations will be shown at the Open Compute Project (OCP) U.S. Summit in San Jose on March 8 and 9, 2017 and are the result of an extensive long term collaboration between the two companies.

The ThunderX2 product family is Cavium's second generation 64-bit ARMv8-A server processor SoCs for Data Center, Cloud and High Performance Computing applications. The family integrates fully out-of-order high performance custom cores supporting single and dual socket configurations. ThunderX2 is optimized to drive high computational performance delivering outstanding memory bandwidth and memory capacity. The new line of ThunderX2 processors includes multiple workload optimized SKUs for both scale up and scale out applications and is fully compliant with ARMv8-A architecture specifications as well as ARM's SBSA and SBBR standards. It is also widely supported by industry leading OS, Hypervisor and SW tool and application vendors.

Cavium’s hardware platform is fully compliant with Microsoft’s Project Olympus which is one of the most modular and flexible cloud hardware design in the data center industry. The platform integrates two ThunderX2 processors in a dual socket configuration. ThunderX2 SoC integrates a large number of fully out-of-order custom ARMv8-A cores with rich IO connectivity for accommodating a variety of peripherals for Azure, delivering excellent throughput and latency for cloud applications. The platform has been designed in collaboration with a leading server ODM supplier for Microsoft.

“Cavium is excited to work with Microsoft on ThunderX2,” said Gopal Hegde, VP/GM, Data Center Processor Group at Cavium. “ARM-based servers have come a long way with first generation ThunderX-based server platforms being deployed at multiple data centers, which enabled a critical mass of ecosystem partners for ARM. We see the second generation products helping to drive a tipping point for ARM server deployment across a mainstream set of volume applications. Microsoft’s support will help accelerate commercial deployment of ARMv8 server platforms for Data Centers and Cloud.”

Dr. Leendert van Doorn, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp said, “We’re impressed with the innovation and competitiveness of the latest generation of ARM server processors, like ThunderX2, and are excited about the roadmap. Microsoft has developed a version Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use, that supports ARMv8.  We have also have been working closely with Cavium on ThunderX2 to support Microsoft’s Project Olympus design so they can be consumed in our data centers.”

About Cavium
Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), offers a broad portfolio of infrastructure solutions for compute, security, storage, switching, connectivity and baseband processing. Cavium’s highly integrated multi-core SoC products deliver software compatible solutions across low to high performance points enabling secure and intelligent functionality in Enterprise, Data Center and Service Provider Equipment. Cavium processors and solutions are supported by an extensive ecosystem of operating systems, tools, application stacks, 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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Server CPU Predictions For 2017

Server CPU Predictions For 2017

By Unknown   22:05   No comments:

2017 promises to be an exciting year for servers and the competitiveness of compute offerings. This year will see this scope of impact not only include enterprise datacenters and the public cloud, but extend to the emergence of "edge computing". Edge computing is defined as compute required to deal with data at or near the point of creation. Among other things, these devices will include the “ocean” of remote, smart sensors, commonly included in internet of things (IoT) discussions.

Here is a list of a few things to we’ll see concerning specific CPUs.

It should come as no surprise that Intel INTC -0.16% continues to dominate (>99%) the server market but is under enormous pressure on all fronts. Xeon and its evolution continue to be their compute vanguard. Xeon-Phi (and now the addition of Nervana) make up their engines for high-performance computing / machine learning. Phi has seen some success, but it isn’t clear yet how Nervana offerings will materialize.

Advanced Micro Devices AMD -0.57% (AMD) has their best shot in years for fielding an Intel competitor that just about everyone (except perhaps Intel) is eager to see. If the AMD Zen server CPU is simply good enough (meaning, it shows up, works and has at least some performance value), it will take market share simply by being an x86 competitor. AMD is encouraged by early indicators. They also have their ATI GPGPU technology which will provide additional opportunities.

ARM Holdings will continue to dominate the mobile and embedded device space, but the fight is hard in these segments. The more likely opportunity for ARM expansion will be at the "edge" and not so much in the server space. The death of Vulcan by Avago, the acquisition of Applied Micro Circuits (APM) and their plan to find a place for X-Gene leaves the Cavium CAVM +0.69% ThunderX, the "yet to be launched" Qualcomm QCOM -0.02% Centriq CPU and a few other very focused ARM initiatives still standing. After years of "This is the Year for ARM Servers", the outlook could be better, and if AMD produces a plausible Intel competitor (capable of running x86 software), it will put extreme pressure on whole ARM server CPU initiative.

OpenPOWER seems on the other hand to have a lot of momentum but to date has not significantly impacted the x86 server market. 2017 may end on a different note. OpenPOWER‘s (IBM IBM -1.27%) willingness to embrace NVIDIA NVDA -0.74% (the darling of the machine learning segment) and embed an NV-Link interface is going to play well with much of AI and HPC communities. By the end of the year, we will have seen some interesting OpenPOWER offerings emerge based on advanced silicon process technology from a variety of sources, and 2018 may see a whole different story. Especially if an embrace from Google GOOGL -0.14%, who has been flirting with OpenPOWER for a while now, materializes and creates a tipping point.

The real challenge to all CPUs is the way they do work. Their philosophy is built on the principle that data must come into the chip, be operated on by the chip, with results or even new data being pushed out of the chip. This whole process creates a natural bottleneck that we've flirted with for decades. As the magnitude and scope of data increases, something has got to give, and a favorite candidate is more parallelism. So far, this has favored GPGPUs or accelerators.

At the bigger-picture business level for datacenters and the public cloud, the real question is not so much which CPU (in fact, the business folks probably couldn't care less), but the economics of private, public or hybrid solutions. It is safe to say enterprise computing will not disappear any time soon, and while there is much activity, the implementations and economics of hybrid solutions have proven to be difficult. According to Gartner, by 2020 more compute power will have been sold by IaaS and PaaS cloud providers than sold and deployed into enterprise datacenters. The fact that companies (especially smaller ones) are either being born in or moving to the cloud at a rapid pace is undeniable. However, NOT all are seeing the expected saving materialize from this move. 2017 will certainly see some careful thinking and maybe even some rethinking of strategy.

The explosion of data at the edge is simply going to change data processing as we know it and will create a variety of computing problems that are difficult to do in the cloud (even though the results may end up there). However, they may not be in the enterprise datacenters as we know them either, and we may find them “stuck” all over the place. For more than sixty years, we have seen compute follow the data. First from the original mainframe datacenter to the desktop, to departmental servers, into enterprise datacenters, and now significantly into the cloud. It is my opinion, that If you plan to put just your data into the cloud, economics (the cost of network usage) will drive your compute there sooner or later. You want to consider this carefully based on your actual needs and usage. There might be a better overall business outcome, depending on your size and ability to operate, in your own datacenter.

The major emerging source of data is at the edge and will drive the need for much compute there. By the way, all the CPUs mentions here should be able do the edge reasonably well so … Game on again!

Disclosure: My firm, Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry including Advanced Micro Devices, Applied Micro Circuits, ARM Holdings, IBM, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm. I do not hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.

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New Cavium ThunderX2 adopts 64-bit ARM-based servers to address application and workload requirements

New Cavium ThunderX2 adopts 64-bit ARM-based servers to address application and workload requirements

By Unknown   03:27   No comments:

Semiconductor vendor Cavium announced Monday ThunderX2, its second generation of workload optimized ARM server SoCs that targets high performance volume servers deployed by public/private cloud and telecom communications data centers and high performance computing applications. It is optimized for data center workloads such as compute, security, storage, data analytics, network function virtualization and distributed databases.

The ThunderX2 line of processors currently includes four workload optimized processors targeting different workloads.

The ThunderX2_CP has been 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 line supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE network Interfaces and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. It also includes accelerators for virtualization and vSwitch offload.

The ThunderX2_ST has been 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.

The ThunderX2_SC has been 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.

The ThunderX2_NT has been 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.

“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.”

Cavium’s ThunderX2 SoC line 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 an array of community and corporate partners. Cavium has also demonstrated its position in the open source software community driving upstream kernel enablement for ThunderX, actively contributing to Linaro’s enterprise and networking groups, investing in Linux Foundation projects such as Xen and OPNFV and sponsoring the FreeBSD Foundation’s ARMv8 server implementation.

ThunderX2 will deliver two to three times the performance across a range of standard benchmarks and applications compared to ThunderX, while boosting the market reach of the ThunderX line 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 modelling. ThunderX2 will deliver comparable performance at a better total cost of ownership compared to the next generation of traditional server processors.(Know More)

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Cavium Steps Up The ARM Race In The Datacenter

Cavium Steps Up The ARM Race In The Datacenter

By Unknown   02:48   No comments:

Today Cavium CAVM -0.02% announced the second generation of their ARM Holdings CPU targeted at the server market. The new chip, the ThunderX2, is expected to be available in the second half of 2017 and appears to be one of the best design specs that has been disclosed for the ARM Holdings ecosystem. There is this small matter of executing to the plan that is required. It is the follow-on to their ThunderX CPU that began sampling early 2015 and was released for production later last year.

ThunderX2 is a 14nm FinFET design fabricated by TSMC, and the company claims it will deliver 2 to 3 times the performance of ThunderX on select workloads with a higher performance to power ratio. Their plan for the X2 is to include 54 ARMv8.2 cores with a target frequency of 2.4 to 2.8 GHz and up to 3 GHz in turbo mode (versus their current 28nm, 48 core, 2.5GHz design), 32MB of what Cavium calls shared Last Level Cache (LLC), 6 DDR4 memory interfaces running at 3200MHz (1 DPC) or 2966MHz (2 DPC), multiple 10/25/40/100 Gb/s Ethernet (KR) interfaces, enhanced virtualization support (including IO), ARM Holdings Trustzone security and a variety of hardware accelerators. In fact, Cavium’s best opportunity to make an impact in the enterprise space is through these accelerators and a must have a laser focus at providing undeniable value propositions.

 

All smiles at the ThunderX2 Computex event (Photo Credit: Anshel Sag in Taipei)

 

Cavium’s ThunderX2 will be available in the same four flavors as ThunderX, each targeting distinct markets.

·         ThunderX2_CP: Optimized for cloud compute workloads such as web serving, web caching, web search and commercial HPC workloads

·         ThunderX2_ST: Optimized for big data, cloud storage, massively parallel processing (MPP) databases and data warehousing workloads and includes hardware accelerators for data protection / integrity / security

·         ThunderX2_SC: Optimized for secure web front-end, security appliances and cloud RAN type workloads and includes hardware accelerators for IPSec, SSL, RSA and their NITROX security accelerator

·         ThunderX2_NT: Optimized for media servers, scale-out embedded applications and NFV type workloads, and includes hardware accelerators for packet parsing, shaping, lookup, QoS and forwarding

ARM Holdings virtually owns the embedded and handheld space, but is ThunderX2 enough for the server space? To date, no one has had a notable impact on this Intel INTC +0.25%-dominated segment even though ARM Holdings announced plans at TechCon last year to have a 20% market share in 2018.

 

 Cavium is convinced they will be performance competitive with Intel with better power utilization and a better total cost of ownership (TCO). Many companies have tried and failed to do this. Most end customers have cited the lack of software or ecosystem immaturity as the leading deterrent or simply the lack of a compelling enough value for them to mandate a switch. That said, the software community has not been standing still in its support of ARM Holdings. Most major Linux distributions (Canonical, FreeBSD, SUSE, CentOS, Red Hat) include ARM support as do a surprising number of languages and tools.

Everyone (except Intel) is looking for a viable competitor to Intel. Advanced Micro Devices AMD +5.44% has announced plans for an x86 ISA Xeon competitor in 2016 / 2017, and now OpenPOWER is gaining traction (with a full software ecosystem backing it). However, in most IT segments, customers seem to be struggling more with the questions of the public cloud, and what if anything they should put there, than with the question of an ARM Holdings server as an Intel alternative. In fact, most businesses are seeking an OpEx alternative to CapEx (which favors the public cloud) or at least a pay-as-you-go model. There have been rumors of ARM platforms in development by the public cloud providers, but there has yet to be a public proclamation. Certainly seems to be an uncomfortable position if all that separates one from their biggest, well-funded rival is price, and you can bet Intel is watching this market like a hawk.

Several companies have announced or are shipping products supporting Cavium and ThunderX (SC15 last year), and it is safe to assume they will support ThunderX2. They include Stack Velocity (1U storage server), E4 Computing (1S / 2U server with NVIDIA NVDA +0.46% Tesla GPUs), Gigabyte (1S / 1U, 2S / 1U and 4x 2S / 2U server), Inventec (2S server platform), Penguin Computing (2S OpenCompute server) and interest from Cray and Lenovo . Will 2017 be the year or will the server space remain at “ARMs” length. For ARM Holdings, it better be! This is probably the last chance they’ll have to change things for a long time. In any event, the competition is good for the industry, and only time will tell.(Know more)

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