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Cavium ThunderX: 2.5 GHz, 48 Core ARMv8 SoC

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  • Cavium ThunderX: 2.5 GHz, 48 Core ARMv8 SoC

    Phoronix: Cavium ThunderX: 2.5 GHz, 48 Core ARMv8 SoC

    Cavium has announced their "ThunderX" SoC family during Computex this week as "the world's highest performing and power optimized 64-bit ARM-based server SoC." The Cavium ThunderX has 48 ARMv8 cores!..

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Originally posted by phoronix View Post
    The Cavium ThunderX has 48 ARMv8 cores!..
    Cryptocoin junkies to start speculate on applicability of this to some still CPU-bound-mined coins in 3... 2... 1...

    Joke aside, that would be a nice CPU for a low-watts but serious-capabilities server.
    (specially given the SATA, PCIe, and DDR support)
    Hope that they have a few interesting demo boards.

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by DrYak View Post
      Cryptocoin junkies to start speculate on applicability of this to some still CPU-bound-mined coins in 3... 2... 1...

      Joke aside, that would be a nice CPU for a low-watts but serious-capabilities server.
      (specially given the SATA, PCIe, and DDR support)
      Hope that they have a few interesting demo boards.
      However, they didn't mention the cost. I wouldn't mind moving my PC to an ARM platform with one of these, given that the price is affordable and QEMU can run any legacy applications I need. This could make a nice Linux laptop.

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      • #4
        And the performance relative to a core i3 will be?

        Sounds like Sun's niagra all over again.

        -bms

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        • #5
          Originally posted by bms20 View Post
          Sounds like Sun's niagra all over again.

          -bms
          Didn't that fail to tickle? Lots of threads, and not woven.
          Hi

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          • #6
            It would certainly be interesting to see how a bunch of applications scale to so many cores. Charlie at semiaccurate speculated that probably not all cores will be able to run at 2.5 GHz at once, but it's still a lot of CPU power.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Cyborg16 View Post
              It would certainly be interesting to see how a bunch of applications scale to so many cores. Charlie at semiaccurate speculated that probably not all cores will be able to run at 2.5 GHz at once, but it's still a lot of CPU power.
              Well... a 4-core arm chip at the same frequency can run full speed for a reasonable amount of time, even lacking almost anything that resembles cooling. I.e., in a phone, the SoC not only lacks cooling, it is practically INSULATED from the environment by layers of plastic.

              11 times as many cores requires 11 times as much cooling, 11 times nothing is still nothing.

              If you want it to be able to hold all cores full out all the time, just make a thermally efficient copper package with a little 486-100 sized cooling fan, and call it a day.

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              • #8
                This will be shit for single-threaded applications such as gaming.

                But imagine running 48 virtual machines on this one.
                Or running a web server, database server, file server, etc.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by vadix View Post
                  However, they didn't mention the cost. I wouldn't mind moving my PC to an ARM platform with one of these, given that the price is affordable and QEMU can run any legacy applications I need. This could make a nice Linux laptop.
                  Remember when they say low power it is relative to server chips not laptop chips. If you take quick guess at power with each core running at say 500 milli watts that would be 24 watts for just 48 cores. That looks good but the caches can easily double that wattage wise so this chip might hit 50 watts. It is a system on chip too so you have to consider all that extra stuff adding to the power budget.

                  Now the cut down models might be more interesting power wise. Then you have the question of bandwidth to support a GPU and other required I/O.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Cyborg16 View Post
                    It would certainly be interesting to see how a bunch of applications scale to so many cores.
                    It is a server where potentially you have many processes and threads running at once.
                    Even applications are highly threaded on servers so until inaction of cores isn't a problem. In fact server users and even some vendors have been asking for these high core count machines.
                    Charlie at semiaccurate speculated that probably not all cores will be able to run at 2.5 GHz at once, but it's still a lot of CPU power.
                    Cores aren't the problem, AMD indicated a couple of years ago that they could run ARM cores at 500 milliwatts each. That was old processes and older generation ARM cores. Running all the cores at full speed should not be a problem.

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