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https://www.nextplatform.com/2018/10/16/a-new-datacenter-compels-arm-to-creat...New threats to Intel from ARM Holdings  This means rolling in new tech using the existing share of chips that the Arm collective sells into cellular base stations as well as switches, gateways, WAN routers, and the smidgen of servers as an entry wedge. That existing share has grown from around 5 percent seven years ago to almost 30 percent so far in 2018. With this large presence in the datacenter and an absolutely dominant share in smartphones, Arm has perhaps the best holistic view of how datacenters and devices are interacting and how this is changing the marketplace. The model of cloudy datacenters creating and distributing media content in its various forms – and 75 percent of the capacity transmitted these days is video, although we would argue that the information content does not yet rival other traditional media such as text and voice – to billions of PCs and smartphones is evolving rapidly, according to Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager of the infrastructure line of business at Arm,
So, ARM is doing very well in datacenters and devices, so ARM now selling in the next level of designs intending to grow in place off of existing strengths of position.
A NEW TURN
The Neoverse line of chips will draw on the current Cortex-A72 and Cortex-A75 designs, which will be recast with enhancements and made with tools and masks that are compatible with the current crop of 16 nanometer and 14 nanometer processes at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp as well as the equivalents at Samsung and GlobalFoundries – the three big independent fabs. ARM did not divulge what these chips, which was called a fork of the Cortex-A72 and Cortex-A75, would have that make them distinct, but we will find out soon enough. We do know that they will be recast as the “Cosmos” platform, and will be implemented in 16 nanometer processes, as the roadmap shows:
Next year, Arm will introduce the “Ares” successor to the currently successful Cosmos tweak, and this is where things get interesting. As the chart above suggests, Arm is promising an architecture that will deliver around 30 percent more performance with each generation, and an annual cadence to the designs that will keep the performance coming. By 2021, the chip designs that Arm will put out will, if this pace can be held, deliver 2.2X more performance per watt than Intel can provide. (By which Arm means aggregate compute throughput, not single thread performance, since clock speeds are going down as core counts go up.)
Arm did talk a bit about the Neoverse platform coming next year, which will be geared for heavy datacenter jobs like network function virtualization dataplanes and servers. The Neoverse war plan calls for server processors that will eventually scale up to 128 cores. Our guess is that Arm will use a multichip module approach that leverages the Cortex-A72 blocks to get 48 cores on a die at first, and then puts eight cores on a chiplet or chip block at first with “Ares” in 2019, then twelve cores per chunk with “Zeus” in 2020, and then sixteen with “Poseidon” in 2021, which also switches to 5 nanometer chip etching. Variants used in dataplane applications that have up to 256 cores eventually, which is interesting indeed.
Key point is ARM is reusing its low energy cell phone tech in packages that can also be a PC or a rack space server chipset, also currently covering ALL THE INFRASTRUCTURE IN BETWEEN WITH A CONSISTENT LOW POWER CHIP SYSTEM.
Intel has its Xenon super duper expensive (high energy hog) rack space server chipsets. ARM does the same jobs using lots of low energy cores at FAR FAR GREATER efficiency numbers.
This was news 2 years ago and it was rolled out last year in Centriq processors from Qualcomm and with the Epic processor line from AMD. It was technically quite successful, but a vast mass of Intel Xenons still sitting in place proved to be an inertia mass that was very hard to get to actively rolling over.
Add it all up, and it could get quite a bit easier to field an Arm server chip, and there is more confidence in a long term roadmap that shows consistent performance growth, multiple fab partners, and a strong commitment to steady progress. This is how the Arm collective might attain that dream of 25-30 percent share in servers, commensurate with its existing share in other datacenter devices.
So this is the crow bar that ARM is using to get the Xenons to begin to roll over ---- MUCH MUCH LOWER OPERATING COSTS and a very consistent MUCH CHEAPER TECH IMPLEMENTATION FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. Each wave of roll over will give the bean pickers a clear one year Return On Investment based off of reduced power and cooling costs, which is always a key financial test that bean pickers use to judge whether to fund a new technology.
So .......
Who is on board with this initiative at this point in time?
Broadcom
“Combing Arm’s long-term infrastructure roadmap with Broadcom’s best in class networking technology, Broadcom delivers leadership performance products for the datacenter that are still power efficient. Arm’s roadmap enables optimizations that accelerate customer workloads for the evolving compute and connectivity requirements of tomorrow’s datacenter,” said Ed Redmond, senior vice president and general manager, Compute and Connectivity, Broadcom, Inc.
Cadence
“Building upon on our longstanding collaboration with Arm, Cadence has delivered specific flows for Arm-based designs from edge nodes through networks to the cloud including joint test chips, library, and memory development and characterization, R By 2021, the chip designs that Arm will put out will, if this pace can be held, deliver 2.2X more performance per watt than Intel can provide.AK implementation flows, optimized verification flows and Cadence DDR, PCIe, and CCIX IP integrations that support Arm’s Neoverse solutions,” said Paul Cunningham, corporate vice president and general manager of the System & Verification Group at Cadence. “We’ve also been working closely with Arm Neoverse ecosystem partners to implement SoC devices in Arm-based datacenters. As the first and only ecosystem partner to provide an Arm ServerReady compliance certification methodology, we’re jointly enabling our mutual customers to shorten time-to-silicon.”
Marvell
“Marvell® Infrastructure Processors are extensively deployed in a variety of leading network products. They are designed to analyze, secure, compute, and transform in both wired and wireless networks from the edge to the core,” said Raj Singh, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Processors BU, Marvell Semiconductor Inc. “As a long term technology licensee, as well as an Arm IP customer, Marvell is very pleased to see this increased focus on the enterprise and 5G markets with Neoverse IP. We believe this will greatly benefit the whole Arm ecosystem in providing high performance and power-efficient solutions for the next generation of network infrastructure and compute.”
Mellanox
“Mellanox smart Ethernet and InfiniBand interconnect solutions provide the highest performance, efficiency, and scalability for Arm-based compute and storage platforms,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Furthermore, Mellanox Bluefield™ SmartNIC integrates multi Arm cores with Mellanox interconnect technology, enabling the next generation of cloud, 5G networking, security storage solutions and more. We look forward to continuing work with Arm to leverage their new capabilities.”
RedHat
“Choice allows businesses to select the best solution for their needs, and this is true all the way down to the underlying architecture. It's up to software vendors like Red Hat to be able to support this demand for choice from our customers as they extend operations into the hybrid cloud," said Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat. "With this emphasis on choice front and center, we look forward to supporting solutions from the Arm Neoverse ecosystem as our customers seek to match their evolving business requirements to the most appropriate enterprise IT solutions.”
SUSE
“SUSE has been an early and enthusiastic supporter of Arm technology. Customers use SUSE products to support IT infrastructure based on Arm processors for High Performance Computing, Cloud, Storage, Network infrastructure, and Edge Computing. The introduction of the Arm Neoverse technology roadmap will accelerate the transformation of IT infrastructure by delivering technology and ecosystems tailored for specific workloads.” Brent Schroeder, SUSE Chief Technology Officer, Americas
Synopsys
“Leading semiconductor and system companies rely on Synopsys tools and Interface IP for their most advanced cloud, infrastructure and networking designs,” said Deirdre Hanford, co-general manager, Synopsys Design Group. “Synopsys and Arm have been collaborating for more than 25 years to enable mutual customer success, and our latest collaboration delivers optimized support for Arm’s Neoverse platforms, where our Design Platform with Fusion Technology™, Verification Continuum™ Platform, and DesignWare® Interface IP have already enabled tapeout success for early adopters of Arm’s Neoverse roadmap, including the next generation “Ares” processor.”
TSMC
“Time to market in today’s rapidly evolving infrastructure requires proven, scalable IP, development tools, advanced processes, and a complete ecosystem to provide compelling solutions,” said Suk Lee, senior director of Design Infrastructure Marketing Division at TSMC. “The Arm Neoverse ecosystem leverages our most advanced processes to provide the highest performance solutions to a highly connected world.”
Xilinx
“High-performance IP, along with a complete ecosystem, enables customers to take full advantage of the flexibility inherent in our Arm-based products, said Gaurav Singh, vice president, architecture and verification, Xilinx. “The evolution of these cores, coupled with the capability of CCIX, provide an ideal platform for smart offload and purpose-driven edge compute platforms. We congratulate Arm on the launch of Neoverse and are looking forward to what it might enable.”
Qualcomm
Qualcomm has already has released 2 generations of Windows laptop chipsets on ARM, and is aiming for a third generation to ship this spring. The latest, the Qualcomm 1000 chipset will be a major expansion of the ARM PC chipset designs. But remember please, the Qualcomm 1000 is simply a "built on ARM technology" customization of the ARM Deimos design generation, nothing more. Qualcomm will release new follow on chipsets to match the next 4 waves of ARM PC releases.
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