Significantly expands market opportunity for 64-bit ARM® based servers by addressing the most demanding application and workload requirements
TAIPEI, Taiwan., May 30, 2016 – Cavium,
Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enables
intelligent processing for enterprise, cloud, data center, wired and wireless
networking today announced ThunderX2™, the 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 (NFV) and
distributed databases. 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 modelling. ThunderX2 will deliver comparable
performance at a better TCO compared to the next generation of traditional
server processors.
ThunderX2 is the second generation workload optimized ARMv8
processor built in 14nm FinFET process. It is fully compliant with ARMv8.2
architecture as well as ARM's Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard.
Key ThunderX2 features will include:
- 2nd generation
of full custom Cavium ARM core.
- Multi-Issue,
Fully OOO.
- 2.4 to 2.8GHz
in normal mode, Up to 3 GHz in Turbo mode.
- > 2X single
thread performance compared to ThunderX.
- Up to 54 cores
per socket delivering 2-3X socket level performance compared to ThunderX.
- Cache.
- 40K I-Cache and
64K D-cache, highly associative.
- 32MB shared
Last Level Cache (LLC).
- Single and dual
socket configuration support using 2nd generation of Cavium Coherent
Interconnect with > 2.5X coherent bandwidth compared to ThunderX.
- System Memory.
- 6 DDR4 memory
controllers per socket.
- Dual DIMM per
memory controller, for a total of 12 DIMMs per socket.
- Up to 3200MHz
in 1 DPC and 2966MHz in 2 DPC configuration.
- Up to 3 TB of
memory in dual socket configuration.
- Full system
virtualization for low latency from virtual machine to IO enabled through
Cavium virtSOC™ technology.
- Next Generation
IO.
- Integrated
10/25/40/50/100GbE network connectivity.
- Multiple
integrated SATAv3 interfaces.
- Integrated PCIe
Gen3 interfaces, x1, x4, x8 and x16 support.
- Integrated
Hardware Accelerators.
- OCTEON® style
packet parsing, shaping, lookup, QoS and forwarding.
- Virtual Switch
(vSwitch) offload.
- Virtualization,
storage and NITROX® V security.
"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 family of processors include, FOUR workload optimized
processors targeting different workloads.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. Cavium has also demonstrated its leadership role in the
Open Source software community driving upstream kernel enablement for ThunderX,
actively contributing to Linaro's Enterprise and Networking Groups, investing
in key Linux Foundation projects such as Xen and OPNFV and sponsoring the
FreeBSD Foundation's ARMv8 server implementation.
Supporting Comments from Cavium ThunderX Partners
AMI:
"Since 2014, AMI has been an active partner with Cavium, with the two
companies collaborating to deliver the most complete firmware and platform
management solution in the scale-out data center and cloud industry. AMI's
scalable Aptio® UEFI Firmware and MegaRAC® SP-X management solutions enable
ThunderX partners to quickly deliver complete system solutions to the market.
AMI is currently shipping production versions of Aptio UEFI firmware and
MegaRAC management solutions customized for ThunderX to customers in US and
Asia. We see Cavium as a key partner with AMI in expanding our server design
capability to include the rapidly growing hyperscale market, as AMI has been
greatly impressed with the tremendous feature set and truly differentiating
technology that Cavium offers with ThunderX. We expect that the latest
generation of ARMv8 server announced today – ThunderX2 – will continue to
improve on that legacy of distinction, and we have great optimism for the
expanded opportunities that this next-generation ARM server platform will bring
to our collective product offering and innovations," commented Subramonian
Shankar, President and CEO of American Megatrends, Inc.
Canonical:
"Canonical and Cavium have partnered since the beginning of the ThunderX
program and we have successfully delivered the recent production release of
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on ThunderX," said Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Canonical.
"With the launch of ThunderX2 Cavium is yet again demonstrating leadership
in the ARMv8 server market and Canonical is excited to collaborate on further
extending and optimizing Ubuntu and key Canonical features such as MAAS, Juju
and Snappy to further accelerate end user deployment and integration. We
congratulate Cavium on this major milestone and look forward to continuing to
expand our partnership."
E4:
"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.
FreeBSD:
"The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to be part of the collaborative effort,
working closely with ARM and Cavium, as an integral player in bringing ARMv8 to
FreeBSD, and is excited to explore the options provided by Cavium's new
processor family. Cavium continues to play a key leadership role in developing
the ecosystem for ARM based servers and ThunderX2 will be another driving force
for expansion in the Open Source Community. We are focused on supporting
strategic technologies and working closely with the community and commercial
vendors, to facilitate and monitor development work like this, to continue
making FreeBSD a compelling platform for education, research, and product
development." Deb Goodkin, Executive Director, The FreeBSD Foundation.
Gigabyte:
"Gigabyte has developed and is already shipping a range of Cavium ThunderX
based server products to customers in US, Europe and Asia," said, Alex
Liu, Head of Product Marketing, GIGABYTE. "Our comprehensive portfolio of
ThunderX-based systems is available for order and a number of customers have
received production units. We are seeing strong demand for these ARM-based
platforms – especially from cloud service providers. The ThunderX2 represents a
leap ahead in terms of overall performance and connectivity, which allows it to
address demanding next generation data center workloads such as real time
analytics and deep learning. Gigabyte will continue to partner with Cavium on
ThunderX2 platforms."
Inventec:
"ThunderX2 from Cavium promises to be the breakthrough ARM-based processor
that the data center market is looking for in terms of general compute
intensive scale-out workloads," said Banks Chen, Head of product center
division of Inventec.
Linaro:
"The ThunderX platform and Cavium's support have been key components of
the collaborative software engineering in the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG),
enabling continuous integration and testing of our work upstream in projects
like UEFI and ACPI," said Linaro CEO George Grey. "We are looking
forward to integrating ThunderX2 systems into our workflow to accelerate
development and further optimize the enterprise software stacks on ARMv8."
NGINX:
“We are excited to see the continued growth of Cavium’s ARM based server
product line with today’s announcement of ThunderX2,” said Paul Oh, Head of
Business Development, NGINX, Inc. “With the proliferation
of new applications and digital services, NGINX Plus
provides a complete software-based application delivery platform with full
support for new technologies, such as efficient and powerful ARMv8 based
servers. We look forward to further partnering with Cavium to drive the
migration to cloud-based content and application delivery."
Red Hat:
"As an inaugural member of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program,
Cavium has been a strong partner in driving technical innovation and
standardization within the ARM ecosystem in the core areas such as UEFI and
ACPI to the ARM SBSA standard" said Tim Burke, vice president, Linux
Engineering, Red Hat. "With this latest version of ThunderX family of
processors Cavium brings support for scalable server designs into the upstream
Linux kernel. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and enablement
efforts with Cavium as they deliver innovative designs based on ARM V8-A
architecture."
SUSE:
"Since SUSE announced its partner program to bring SUSE Linux Enterprise
12 to ARM V8 processors, Cavium has worked closely with us to not only deliver
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 to ThunderX customers, but we have also
collaborated with Cavium to bring SUSE Enterprise Storage to our joint
customers," said Jay Kruemcke, SUSE product manager. "The initial
launch of ThunderX by Cavium raised the standard for ARM servers with key
capabilities such as dual socket support, 96 core scalability and integrated
server class IO. Cavium has demonstrated great leadership in the ARM server
market, and the next-generation ThunderX2 SOC continues that tradition."
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About Cavium
Cavium is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that
enable intelligent processing in enterprise, data center, cloud, wired and
wireless service provider applications. Cavium offers a broad portfolio of
integrated, software compatible processors ranging in performance from 100 Mbps
to 100 Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in enterprise, data
center, broadband/consumer and access & service provider equipment.
Cavium's processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating
systems, tool support, reference designs and other services. Cavium's principal
offices are in San Jose, California with design team locations in California,
Massachusetts, India, and China. For more information, please visit: http://www.cavium.com.
Cavium Contact
Angel Atondo
Sr. Marketing Communications Manager
Telephone: +1 408-943-7417
Email: angel.atondo@cavium.com
