Hi, welcome to GIGABYTE.
This is Hoshino,
head of Server Product Planning at GIGABYTE.
We released our first line-up based on Ampere Altra in COMPUTEX.
I am happy to tell you we have achieved many use cases
and applications including Cloud, 5G Edge and even HPC already.
As I mentioned in the first wave launch announcement,
GIGABYTE will be more aggressive to release a bunch of dual sockets solutions.
I can’t wait to announce that we are ready!
I would like to introduce to you our amazing 2nd wave of Ampere Altra Max based servers.
In our second wave for Altra Max,
we prepared 1 standard form factor dual socket board – MP72.
For our top selling server series,
for the 1U R182 and 2U R282 series,
they have dual sockets too.
I want to highlight these 2 servers,
because they are designed with the new system optimized architecture.
The last server of the H262 is a very powerful 2U 4 Node dual sockets design.
It can help us to achieve a lot of new business opportunities with our partners.
Let’s look at our new dual sockets server board – MP72-HB0.
It’s a standard EATX form factor board.
2 LGA sockets support Ampere Altra Max SoC.
Due to the space limitation, total of 16 DIMMs of DDR4,
which is the max memory capacity for EATX.
We can design MP72 with 3 Gen4 x16 PCIe slots
which can support dual-slot GPUs and another 1 slot with Gen4 x8.
Different from the first wave Altra line-up,
this board has the newest Aspeed 2600 BMC chip to allow remote management.
In the rear I/O, there is Dual 10G Base-T ports based on Broadcom LAN,
as well as a VGA port and 2 USB3.0 ports.
Storage wise, the MP72 features 2 x slimline U.2 ports and 1 PCIe Gen4 M.2 on board.
Because there is no storage function from SoC,
we added a SATA controller on the board and support 6 SATA3 ports for hard drives.
For the first SKU for R182 series,
we have the R182-P91 with the Altra Max processor.
The P91 provides All Flash Array supporting a Max of 12 Gen4 U.2 drives in the front bays.
And when you look inside, you can find our new motherboard, MP92.
To enhance the flexibility and user friendliness,
2 x OCP3.0 slots are available,
and we created our own G-SC module which is similar to the DC-SCM,
a concept of modular server management that moves common server management,
security,and control features from a typical motherboard onto a BMC module.
The basic dual 1G networking on this G-SC module uses Intel I350.
Obviously, dual sockets of Ampere Altra Max and Max of 32 DDR4 DIMMs,
which is the standard feature of R182.
On rear I/O,
2 full height half-length Gen4 x16 slots
and 2 Gen4 x16 OCP3.0 slots are available for add on cards.
R282-P91 is a 2U All Flash Array model supporting Max of 24 Gen4 U.2 drives
based on the common design of the MP92,
so 2 OCP3.0 slots and a G-SC module is available for the dual processors of Max of 32 DIMMs.
On the rear I/O, taking the advantage of Ampere Max’s rich PCIe lanes,
the R282 can provide plenty of full height half length slots
even though more PCIe lanes need to be occupied for NVMe U.2 connections.
And storage wise, 4 x 2.5” hot-swap SATA/SAS bays for higher capacity.
Actually, we have another SKU – P92 which can support 2 dual slots GPUs
with optimized thermal and power solutions as well.
GIGABYTE H series servers use a high-density design for more computing performance.
In the same 2U form factor,
there are 4 computing nodes that share storage, cooling system and power supply.
H262-P60 is the worldwide first high-density server based on Altra Max solution.
With a SATA controller on board in each node,
P60 can support total 24 2.5” SATA/SAS drives in the front.
With the half width motherboard design,
still dual processors and 16 DIMMs are available in each node.
On the rear I/O,
each computing node features 2 low-profile slots with PCIe Gen4 x16
and a single OCP3.0 slot.
Regarding the upgrade and more details about new Altra Max,
let’s hear from our great partner – Ampere about their work.
Hi, I'm Jeff Wittich, Chief Product Officer at Ampere computing.
I’m excited to be back to share news with you about the Ampere Altra product family.
We are a passionate,experienced team committed to building the next generation processors
designed for the cloud and edge.
Previously, I spoke about how the needs of the cloud has dramatically diverged
from the needs of traditional enterprise IT over the last decade.
Current x86 solutions have not met the needs of a modern cloud.
Since 2013, the innovation rate has slowed down dramatically
as shown by the slower rate of improvement in performance,
and the slower rate of improvement in the performance per watt
as more power is needed to increase performance year after year.
And as we all know, power consumption is a global issue
as data centers consume about 3 percent of the worldwide energy
with experts predicting that number to grow to as much as 11 percent in the next decade.
That is why we built the World’s First Cloud Native Processor -- Ampere Altra.
This is the first CPU that was designed from the ground up
for the unique needs of the modern cloud to deliver three key areas :
Predictable High Performance,
Linear scalability across the platform
and Power Efficient Compute Density
The Ampere Altra family delivers Predictable High Performance with maximum cores.
And I’m happy to announce we’ve expanded
our Ampere Altra family with Ampere Altra Max,
now with 128 cores in a single processor.
In addition to providing each core with large caches and memory bandwidth,
each core has been specifically optimized
for consistently high performance across many different workloads
regardless of the number of users.
This means that a Cloud Service Provider can deliver industry leading performance
all of the time to their users without worrying about degraded service.
Ampere Altra and Altra Max delivers Linear Scalability across the Platform.
As more cores are brought online, performance scales linearly.
Combined with maximum network and IO bandwidth,
this results in the highest performance scaled out across the server, rack, and data center.
Being able to scale performance to meet increasing demand of users
provides the elasticity that Cloud Service Providers require.
Our products also deliver Power Efficient Compute Density.
By optimizing our processors for the highest performance per watt
and the lowest power per core,
Ampere Altra and Ampere Altra Max are the most efficient data center processors.
This allows Cloud Service Providers to deploy more cores and more CPUs,
meaning more capacity in the same rack and data center footprint.
And Ampere Altra Max performance is impressive.
In a recent tech press article,
Phoronix compared Ampere Altra Max performance vs X86.
Phoronix stated that : “Across a wide range of tests,
Ampere Altra Max M128-30 2P is proving to be very competitive
with the AMD EPYC 7763 2P in workloads that scale well
and make full use of ARMv8 capabilities.
Given the Ampere Altra Q80-33 2P was already outperforming the Xeon Platinum 8380 2P Ice Lake server,
it's no surprise Ampere's lead there has widened even more substantially with now being able to offer 128 cores per socket.”
And what's really exciting now is that the ampere Altra Max processor is in production right now.
We’re excited to be partnering with GIGABYTE to bring Ampere Altra Max to the market together.
This all starts with the MP92-FS0 motherboard,
which enables the full breadth of Ampere Altra capabilities:
up to 128 cores, 8 memory channels with a total of 16 DIMMs with DDR4 speed of 3200,
and a massive PCIe design.
Ampere Altra uses PCIe Gen 4,
and the MP92 provides 2 OCP 3.0 modules,a DC-SCM module and 2 x16 slots in a 1U configuration.
In the 2U 8 x16 slots are supported.
The spread-core form factor of MP92 makes it an extremely flexible server board.
The MP92 goes into both the R282 2U dual socket server series for cloud
and the 1U dual socket R182 general computing server.
Just like Ampere,
GIGABYTE is spanning the cloud from hyperscale to edge
and we have many other platforms in the works togerther.
Thanks to GIGABYTE & Hoshino-san for being great partners
in building true Cloud platforms with Ampere Altra.
Now, we’re excited to be working together to bring Ampere Altra Max processor
with 128 cores to the market to meet the needs of the modern cloud.
Thank you, Jeff and the great support from Ampere.
As Jeff mentioned, Ampere Altra and Altra Max is Pin to Pin compatible.
That means customers don’t need to change their server hardware
when they want to upgrade with new generation, Altra Max.
GIGABYTE can provide BIOS & BMC refresh for our first wave Altra line-up customers if needed.
Our hope is that the 2nd wave dual socket Altra Max line-up can achieve more applications
and enlarge the scale of ARM server market.
One more good news,
our roadmap and the product planning for next generation Ampere Siryn has kicked off.
So until next time.