Open Server Summit 2016 : Linley Group Slides

1. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
ARM Server Processor Opportunity
Linley Gwennap, Principal Analyst
April 14, 2016

2. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
About Linley Gwennap
• Founder, principal analyst, The Linley Group
• Leading vendor of technical reports on processor, mobile,
and communications semiconductors and IP
• Editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report
• Author of recent articles on ARM, Broadcom, Intel, Marvell,
MediaTek, NetSpeed, Qualcomm, et al
• Author of “A Guide to Mobile Processors” and “Mobile
Semi Market Share Forecast”
• Former CPU designer at Hewlett-Packard
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3. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Agenda
• Server market opportunity
• Three ARM waves for servers
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4. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Clouds Open Arms to New Architectures
• Cloud service providers reaching out for non x86 processors
• Intel has >97% server processor market share
• CSPs want a multi-vendor environment
• Not possible for one vendor to cover all application spaces
• Intel offer high memory bandwidth only with high CPU performance
• Many applications benefit from hardware accelerators
• Intel can address these problems with custom products, but only for large
customers
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One Solution Does Not Fit All Applications

5. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
New Cloud Technologies Change Processors
• Microservices break down traditional scale-up applications
• Better for smaller CPU cores
• Hyperconvergence merges compute and networking in one box
• Networking is well suited to smaller CPU cores, hardware acceleration
• Reduced demand for multi-socket systems
• SoC processors reduce size and power without coherency overhead
• New workloads change balance between CPU, memory, I/O
• In-memory databases need large memory but moderate compute
• Cold storage needs high bandwidth but little compute
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6. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Opportunities for ARM in Servers
• Market needs 64-bit processors—ARMv8 now available
• Xeon E5 defines mainstream server market
• Little to no volume in microservers
• Xeon E7 is too expensive for all but a few applications
• ARMv8 software ecosystem continues to build
• Commercial support for open-source stack (Linux, etc)
• CSPs porting their in-house software using GCC
• APIs available for networking functions (SDN and NFV)
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7. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
First ARMv8 Wave (2014-15)
• AppliedMicro X-Gene 1 entered production in 2Q14
• First ARMv8 server processor
• First merchant ARMv8 processor product of any kind
• 8-core X-Gene 1 used 40nm technology to accelerate time to market
• AMD A1100 (“Seattle”) ready for production in 2015
• 28nm processor using 8 stock Cortex-A57 CPUs
• First wave products had low performance, targeted microservers
• Intel offered 8-core Atom (“Silvermont”) with better perf/watt
• ARMv8 server software infrastructure wasn’t ready for deployment
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8. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Second ARMv8 Wave (late 2015-2016)
• AppliedMicro X-Gene 2 entered production in 2H15
• Move to 28nm improves perf/watt, but not significantly
• Quad DRAM channels offer more memory bandwidth, capacity than Atom
• Cavium ThunderX entered production in 2H15
• Massive 48-core design matches per-socket throughput of low-end Xeon E5
• Low per-core performance enhanced by hardware accelerators
• Second wave offers advantages over Intel for specific workloads
• X-Gene 2 good for scale out memory-intensive applications (e.g. in-memory DB)
• ThunderX good for embedded applications, esp. storage and networking
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9. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Third ARMv8 Wave (2017-2018)
• AppliedMicro X-Gene 3 targets production in 2H17
• 32 cores, 3.0GHz processor will challenge Xeon E5
• Qualcomm likely to reach production in 2017
• No product details yet, but we expect 32 cores using smartphone CPU
• Cavium moving ThunderX to FinFET, production likely in 2017
• Broadcom Vulcan on hold after Avago deal
• Third wave targets mainstream Xeon E5 customers
• Uses 16/14nm FinFET technology on a par with Intel 14nm “Skylake”
• Brawnier cores in X-Gene 3 compete for Web-scale computing
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10. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Requirements for ARM Server Processor Adoption
• Match performance of Xeon E5
• Xeon E5 is the most commonly deployed server processor—need to replace
• Match per-core and per-socket performance to serve scale-out applications
• Match or exceed Xeon E5 power efficiency (perf/watt)
• Requires strong microarchitecture and be within one process node of Intel
• Excellent cache performance and multicore scaling
• Proven reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) feature set
• Exceed Xeon E5 in one or more areas (e.g., memory, accelerators)
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11. © 2016 The Linley Group March 15, 2016
Conclusions
• Server OEMs want more choices in processor suppliers
• ARMv8 software infrastructure is maturing in the data center
• Early ARM server processors deliver advantages on certain workloads
• Hindered by low core count and/or lagging process technology versus Intel
• Third wave of ARM server processors offers more choices
• High performance, high core counts for scale-out workloads
• Hardware accelerators for specialized workloads
• Server processors are no longer a single-vendor market
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