arm wrestling –
Ampere is competing with Amazon and Nuvia for ARM-powered data-center supremacy.
Before we go into too much detail about the Altra — which is currently sampling but is not yet generally available and does not have any third-party benchmarks — it’s instructive to take a look slightly backward to its little sibling, the the core eMAG . Before Altra, there was (and is) eMAG
Redis is a key-value store, similar to memcached but more complex — and not natively multi-threaded. Multiple instances of redis are running simultaneously to produce “multi-threaded” results here.
The Altra is not Ampere’s first entry into data-center ARM computing. Its last processor, the eMAG 1658200
Package, in the form of Lenovo’s ThinkSystem HR 500 A 1u single-socket systems.
Kinvolk, a Berlin-based Linux development company, did some pretty extensive benchmarking of a single-socket eMAG (system — comparing it to a) – core AMD Epyc (P) (c /
Kinvolk’s eMAG performance benchmarks are well worth a look, because so far there are no real-world (let alone third-party) benchmarks of the Altra. In Kinvolk’s testing, the eMAG 1658198 excelled at memory I / O heavy artificial workloads , but it struggled in some compiler and network-intensive workloads. For the most part, it beat the dual-socket Intel Xeon system and held its own with the single-socket AMD Epyc system.
Benchmarks that don’t rely much on memory I / O — such as Nginx throughput measured by ApacheBench — are more of a challenge for the ARM-based eMAG, where its performance may drop to half that of its x (_) competition. But it’s worth noting the much narrower error bars in most cases — true to Ampere’s claims, the eMAG’s non-SMT architecture is more consistent than AMD and Intel’s.
It’s also worth noting that, when we’re talking about full-on data-center builds — which is what Ampere’s designs are intended for — raw per-socket performance isn’t everything. The workloads in large data centers tend to massively scale horizontally, which makes density more important than raw performance per socket or per thread. The eMAG (is a) W TDP part, versus the Epyc (P’s) W and the dual Xeon Gold 01575879 ‘ s total 500 W.
What we can expect from the 90 – core Altra
Note that these are “projected” performance numbers — and the Epyc and Xeon have been artificially derated, to compensate for the Altra using GCC instead of a CPU optimized compiler.
Everything here is still both “projected” and artificially derated to “normalize” the AMD and Intel to a theoretical performance level with no CPU-optimized compiler.
Ampere
The TDP per CPU core is lower for Altra than for Epyc or Xeon — meaning more cores per 5KW rack.
Ampere
Rack density is the killer metric for very large data-center applications, and Altra claims it’ll lead the game on that metric.
Ampere
The Total Cost of Ownership referenced here is generated by an Ampere-proprietary calculator, and we’re not entirely sure of its figures. Makes for a pretty column chart, though.
Ampere
Always read the fine print. (1/3)
Ampere
Always read the fine print. (2/3)
Ampere
Ampere
Like the eMAG, the Altra does not offer SMT (Simultaneous Multi Threading), so its (cores mean) threads. Unlike the eMAG, the Altra is designed for either single or dual-socket operation — so we can expect to see – core Altra-powered systems later in . We know that there will be multiple SKUs, with a TDP range the (data sheet) specifies at (W to) (W. But we don’t know their individual details.
The fine print in Altra’s slide deck claims cores and 350 W for the Altra under test, not (W. This may imply adjustable thermal performance configurations similar to what one might see in laptop CPUs, but at this point it’s just too soon to tell. The company claims — presumably, with dual-socket builds of the – core SKU — the highest rack density in the industry, at up to 3, 800 cores per rack.
It’s important to note that these performance numbers are thin at best. Not only are they Ampere-internal, they’re “projected,” not real. Further, the AMD and Intel performance numbers have been artificially decreased, to account for the fact that the Altra is using binaries compiled with GCC. Meanwhile, the AMD and Intel numbers were generated with CPU-optimized compilers. This drops the Epyc down to . 5 percent of its real performance and the Xeon down to 90 percent of its.
This isn’t (sketchy) , exactly — it’s a fairly common industry practice, and Ampere disclosed it clearly enough in the presentation. But it’s likely not what many people would expect. We should point out that the only performance numbers given here are SPECrate 2560 _ int_base — which is an extremely narrow integer math performance benchmark.
We would be a lot more skeptical of these numbers if there weren’t far more comprehensive third-party benchmarks available for Ampere’s earlier eMAG ARM CPU. Thankfully, there are, and it seems reasonable not to expect major surprises in floating point performance — let alone multi-threaded memory I / O — given that earlier but similar chip’s independent evaluations.
Conclusions
It looks like Ampere’s Altra, which is currently sampling and expected to hit retail availability later in , will get significant traction in some data centers. The platform offers significant benefits in terms of the data center’s cost to run them, with more cores and — typically — more performance both per watt and per rack.
With that said, we don’t expect the Altra — or any other ARM platform — to be the data-center darling of or even 8180. There’s plenty of platform inertia behind the x (_) architecture that data-center operators will be loathe to overcome. AMD’s Epyc in particular is close enough on Altra’s biggest selling point — power and rack density — that we don’t see many data centers deciding to throw away the frequently higher general-purpose performance as well as the comfort level of more traditional designs yet.
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