dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on August 16, 2014 3:53 am wrote:
> Ronald Maas (rmaas.delete@this.wiwo.nl) on August 15, 2014 11:14 pm wrote:
> .....
> >
> > So for now AMD and Applied Micro would be my pick for the top dogs in the ARM server space.
> > First generation seems to be good enough to generate some revenue and to start the ball rolling.
> > But 2nd or 3rd generation is going to be critical for real longer term success.
> >
> > May you live in interesting times
>
> I'm not altogether sure about AMD. It doesn't have a pot of money or another business it can use the processors
> in. Broadcom and Applied Micro for instance can use their processors in their core business and Broadcom
> has got money. The big deciding factor I think in the end will be how good they are in fitting into particular
> market segments or whether they are good at producing SoCs with their processor in as a component for large
> customers. At least AMD have got expertise in that with their games chips. Producing general purpose server
> chips and directly competing against Intel will be difficult, but the widest reasonably accessible market
> like that is web servers with good networking - and that does have real possibilities.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/arms-battle-for-the-datacentre-the-contenders/

Rather than just web serving, these systems are being built to also power data analytics on Hadoop clusters, fetch and put data in NoSQL data stores, streaming media and high-performance computing, sharing processing duties with GPUs, FPGAs or ASICs.

> The comparison with spec benchmarks to top level Xeons is a bit beside the point. The POWER processors
> are already in that market and it isn't really sensible to go up against that as a first aim. It
> isn't the mass market ARM has been in. As to RAS etc features though ARM has had a bit of experience
> in real time control with things like three synchronized processors working at the same time on
> the same data. The requirements for even tiny processors can very stringent indeed.

Microprocessor report estimates that Cavium 80W (estimated) SoC will score 350 on SPECint_2006. They give 320 score for the 95W Xeon E5-2470 v2. Regarding efficiency, Microprocessor report writes:

Compared with Xeon, ThunderX could deliver 50% to 100% more performance per watt and per dollar, particularly when considering the additional chips that Intel needs to complete the server design. Integrating the system fabric switch, a feature that Calxeda also provided, further reduces system (rack-level) cost compared with a Xeon-based design. These advantages should be enough to gain
design wins against Intel, particularly in a server market that is hungry for an alternative to the x86 giant.