With Rising Arm Core Counts, Linux 5.1+ ARM64 Images Default To 256 Cores Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: With Rising Arm Core Counts, Linux 5.1+ ARM64 Images Default To 256 Cores Support

As a change in acknowledging the increasing Arm SoC core counts as more vendors take stabs at higher-end server chips, the default 64-bit Arm (ARM64 / AArch64) kernel image as of Linux 5.1 will default to supporting 256 CPUs compared to the current default limit of 64 CPU cores...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ARM64-256-Default-NR_CPUS

[rene]

and this is, ..? newsworthy? # vi .config ; problem solved, ..! :-/

[cybertraveler]

I like learning about these little technical details. I often find myself researching these topics Michael brings up after reading an article like this.

[schmidtbag]

and this is, ..? newsworthy? # vi .config ; problem solved, ..! :-/

This patch in and of itself isn't that interesting, but, the implications behind it are very interesting. If this suggests we're going to be seeing CPUs beyond 64 cores, that's noteworthy.

[starshipeleven]

Heh, still waiting for ARM server boards with UEFI (possibly u-boot+efi) here. You know, the ARM hardware that does not require that a dts file is mainlined or provided at boot time.

[wizard69]

This patch in and of itself isn't that interesting, but, the implications behind it are very interesting. If this suggests we're going to be seeing CPUs beyond 64 cores, that's noteworthy.

This is exactly what people should take from the post. We are not far from having very high core count machines on the market. These would be single chip machines. More importantly I’m expecting high core count machines to hit the desktop soon (at reasonable cost).

On a related note if Apple is actually thinking about going ARM, the reason may very well be the ease with which they will be able to deliver high core count machines for the workstation market. With 7nm tech they could easily deliver a 32 thread or even a 64 thread processor for the Mac Pro. With a bit of trimming such a chip could also go into laptops. People seem to be focused on laptop chips from Apple but I could see an entirely different approach where they go after high performance desktop computing.

In any event im expecting to see a lot of high core count ARM chips on the market real soon. Should be huge for people doing work that can leverage parallel computing .

[cybertraveler]

I think Mozilla have a headstart on Google to take advantage of high core counts. Their WIP Servo web-rendering engine is largely written in Rust and is designed to be massively parallel. I think it could make great use of these high-core-count chips as they trickle down into the consumer device market. We may get to a point where Firefox has Servo built-in and is taking advantage of modern many-core chips and Chrome is left playing catch up.

[haerwu]

If this suggests we're going to be seeing CPUs beyond 64 cores, that's noteworthy.

ThunderX2 is 28 cores with 4 threads per core == 112 threads per socket. And you can have two sockets on board.
ThunderX1 is 48 cores per socket and you can have two sockets on board == 96 cores.

Both require CPU count >64.

Heh, still waiting for ARM server boards with UEFI (possibly u-boot+efi) here. You know, the ARM hardware that does not require that a dts file is mainlined or provided at boot time.

You mean any standard SBBR compliant server? Like APM Mustang, HPe M400, Huawei Kuoang 916/920, ThunderX1/X2 systems etc? We have those for years now...

[Calinou]

xkcd was right again (with 4× less cores this time)



(I'm fine with this improvement actually, but I thought it would be a nice reference to make.)