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AMD-Opteron-A1100

Today AMD is formally launching its offset ARM processor core, the Opteron A1100. AMD get-go announced its plans to enter the ARM market place in 2022, with the chip expected to ship by mid-2014. The visitor plainly began early sampling around that fourth dimension frame, but is only now launching the processor.

The new Opteron A1100 is pretty much what AMD promised in its early previews of the device. It packs eight Cortex-A57 CPU cores, with each pair of cores sharing a 1MB L2 (512K finer allocated to each chip). An 8MB L3 cache backs the unabridged CPU cluster, and the CPU supports both DDR3 and DDR4. ECC support is also provided.

AMD-Opteron1

The new A1100 supports up to 64GB per channel (128GB total) if registered DDR4 DIMMs are used, and 64GB of full retention when using standard DDR4. The board also includes dual 10GbE ports, 14 SATA3 controllers, and i PCIe 3.0 slot with x8 back up.

The exact SKUs are shown below:

Opteron-SKU

The quad-cadre A1120 is a 25W fleck at 1.7GHz, the A1150 is a 32W core at 2GHz, and the A1170 is a 32W chip at 2GHz. The last two flavors are both 8-cadre processors, but all three SKUs share the aforementioned retentiveness capabilities and L3 cache. If AMD follows its past history on evaluating TDP, the 25-32W figures volition correspond a worst-case scenario for the flake, rather than its performance in a full general workload. AMD historically rates TDP in the first manner, while Intel uses the 2nd — and that's why you can't usually directly compare TDPs between the two companies.

Volition it sell?

AMD has already lined up launch partners, with support from SoftIron — though the banner on the company's website states that systems are simply bachelor in "limited quantities."

In that location are some major questions regarding AMD's decision to push button into ARM, still. For i, the company told journalists that while it expected its new A1100 to compete well against Intel's Avoton line of Atom processors that offset debuted in 2022. If AMD had kept its initial launch schedule and shipped the Cortex-A57 in 2022, information technology may well have had a leg up in the nascent dense server market.

Between the 2022 expected launch and the bodily shipments today, Intel had time to bring another line of server products to market — the 14nm "Xeon-D." That chip has a very potent value statement — Anandtech labeled it "the Xeon D is probably the about awesome product Intel has delivered in years." It'south non specially suitable for HPC or large-memory requirements, but it'south dandy for everything else.

AMD has stated that it expects A1100 chips to start effectually $150, which would price them competitively against Intel's Cantlet-based hardware, but doesn't exactly offer the visitor a lot of profit margin.

AMD'southward delay may accept limited the A1100's sales marketplace, just it may turn out to exist a smart move in the long run. It'due south hard to say that AMD is belatedly when no other ARM server vendor has managed to field an Intel-compatible product. The ecosystem and support network that ARM servers need to be competitive with their x86 counterparts is notwithstanding in its infancy, and it ultimately doesn't thing how good your hardware is if the software stack isn't there to support it. Rory Read, AMD's previous CEO, justified ownership SeaMicro and investing in ARM as a long-term plan because he claimed the server market would be at least 15% ARM by 2022. This was always a dubious statement, and it'southward now conspicuously simulated — ARM will not shoot from 0% to 15% of a market in less than 24 months.

From this viewpoint, the A1100 is a commercial proof-of-concept production that may not offer competitive performance across the board, but gives both AMD and its vendor partners an opportunity to earn a modest ROI while ramping upwardly 2nd-generation designs more than rapidly. In the by, AMD claimed that the A1100 would be its first ARM production, with K12 post-obit quickly behind. The company hasn't talked almost K12 at all since Jim Keller left the company, only it's supposedly on track for a 2022 deployment.

I tend to remember that AMD did the right thing by easing Seattle out the door rather than drop-boot information technology in 2022. Server customers intendance only as much about stability and robust software solutions than they do nearly hardware performance. I wouldn't await to the A1100 to do much to opposite AMD'southward lost server market share or overall earnings, yet — the company has nevertheless to announce any major purchasing wins, and it hasn't shown performance information.

At best, the Opteron A1100 volition wedge a pes in the door of the ARM server market, with a few pocket-sized wins and plenty competitive strength to fuel client interest in hereafter markets. If AMD or Qualcomm desire to bust this market open up, they'll probably need custom designs and ameliorate hardware to practise information technology.