Benchmarking An ARM 96-Core Cavium ThunderX System

A Phoronix reader granted us remote access to a FOXCONN C2U4N_MB system featuring two Cavium ThunderX 48-core SoCs. For those curious about the potential of a modern 96-core ARM platform, here are some basic benchmark results.

The last time I had access to a 96-core ARM configuration for testing was six years ago when helping out on a 96-core Ubuntu ARM solar-powered computer.. Back then it was built out of PandaBoard ES development boards with their 1.0GHz dual-core Cortex-A9 processors while since then ARM technology has advanced a great deal.

The current-generation Cavium ThunderX SoCs are using 64-bit ARMv8 cores, manufactured on a 28nm process with a TDP less than 100 Watts, and their models feature up to 48 cores at 2.5GHz

The Cavium ThunderX configuration at 96 cores with the FOXCONN C2U4N_MB motherboard also had 4 x 32GB DDR4-2133MHz memory, 250GB Samsung 850 SSD, and was running Ubuntu 16.04 with the Linux 4.10 kernel and GCC 5.4 compiler.

On the following pages are a few different benchmark scenarios for those wondering about the rough performance potential.