Ampere, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, released its first generation Armv8-A 64-bit processors for data centers.
Key specs:
- 32 Ampere-designed Armv8-A cores running up to 3.3 GHz Turbo
- Eight DDR4-2667 memory controllers
- 42 lanes PCIe 3.0 for high bandwidth I/O
- 125W TDP for maximum power efficiency
- TSMC 16nm FinFET process
Pricing:
32 cores @ up to 3.3 Ghz Turbo $850
16 cores @ up to 3.3 Ghz Turbo $550.
Ampere said it has been selected by Lenovo as well as several ODMs.
“We have made tremendous progress since our launch eight months ago, continuing to execute on our first and second generation products. More importantly, we are ahead of schedule on building out a robust, multi-product roadmap that meets the performance and features demanded by the cloud computing ecosystem,” said Renee James, chairman and CEO of Ampere. “We are partnering with world-class OEMs like Lenovo and several ODMs to address the unique design requirements for our cloud customers and meet their total cost and performance targets.”
Ampere emerges from stealth with 64-bit ARM server designs
Ampere, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, emerged from stealth and revealed its plans for 64-bit ARM-based server processors aimed at hyperscale cloud applications and next-generation data centers.
Ampere Computing is headed by Renee James, the former president of Intel until 2016. Its team also includes three other Intel veterans: Atiq Bajwa, Chief Architect, and foremerly VP and GM of product architecture at Intel; Rohit Avinash Vidwans, Executive Vice President of Engineering, with 25 years experience at Intel including work on Xeon microprocessors for data center and enterprise servers; and Greg Favor, Senior Fellow, and 25 years experience at Intel including over 60 patents. Ampere is backed by The Carlyle Group.
Ampere said its processors will offer a high performance, custom core Armv8-A 64-bit server operating at up to 3.3 GHz, 1TB of memory at a power envelope of 125 watts. It will also offer mixed signal I/O features including PCIE Gen 3, SATA Gen 3, USB and workload accelerators, as well as the high-performance on-chip fabric. The processors are sampling now and will be in production in the second half of the year.
In October, The Carlyle Group acquired the compute business of AppliedMicro from MACOM, which earlier in 2017 acquired Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AppliedMicro”) in a deal was valued at approximately $770 million on the day it was announced.
In March 2017, AppliedMicro announced the sampling of its third generation 16-nanometer FinFET Server-on-a-Chip (SoC) solution, X-Gene 3. The device is an ARMv8-A compatible processor that matches comparable x86 processors in CPU throughput, per-thread performance, and power efficiency while offering advantages in memory bandwidth and total cost of ownership. It features 32 ARMv8-A 64-bit cores operating at speeds up to 3.0 GHz, eight DDR4-2667 memory channels with ECC and RAS supporting up to 16 DIMMs and addressing up to 1TB of memory and 42 PCIe Gen 3 lanes with eight controllers.
