Hi, I'm Jeff Wittich,
head of products at Ampere Computing.
We are a passionate,
experienced team committed to building the next generation processors
designed for the cloud and edge.
When we talk about the Cloud,
we’re focused on both the hyperscale clouds
as well as the emerging edge cloud as well.
Looking back over the last 10 or 15 years,
the needs of the cloud have dramatically diverged
from the needs of traditional enterprise IT.
A number of changes have occurred.
The software ecosystem has changed
as developers have moved towards cloud native applications
and the shift towards containers and micro services.
There's been a large growth in the edge
which necessitates distributed computing
across your entire infrastructure,
and also demands increases in power efficiency
as well as additional demands
to increase the density of compute for large hyperscalers.
Also,
with the emergence and the growth in A.I.
and machine learning,
this increased the need for compute capabilities
across the entire infrastructure.
And lastly,
as cloud service providers have optimized infrastructures,
they've moved to more and more customized architectures,
especially those that are heterogeneous.
They're starting to deploy GPUs for A.I. training.
They're using smart NICS for network offload
and increasingly
they're looking at using non x86 CPUs
in their infrastructure as well.
And looking back over the last 10 or 12 years,
the current solutions just don't meet the needs of the cloud.
From 2008 to 2013,
x86 processors were able to increase performance
by 60 percent annually
and improve performance per watt at the same rate.
However, since 2013,
the rate of innovation has slowed down dramatically.
Not only has the rate of improvement in performance slowed,
but the performance per watt increases have similarly slowed
as more and more power is needed
to increase performance year after year.
And power consumption is more than just a concern
around density and optics.
It's a global issue as well.
Today,
data centers consume about 3 percent
of the worldwide energy.
However, experts predict
that could grow to as much as 11 percent over the next decade.
Now over the last 5 or 10 years,
that 3 percent number has been able to be maintained
because of innovations in data center efficiency
as PUE has decreased.
However, all of the easy things have been done.
We need new innovation
in order to continue to maintain the current levels
of energy consumption.
And when we look at the greenhouse gas emissions,
the airline industry is currently regarded as a major offender.
However, data centers today
currently emit as much greenhouse gas every year
as the airline industry.
We need power efficient processors
in order to continue to improve those numbers over time.
At Ampere, when we look at the needs of the modern cloud,
we think of three key areas.
One, the cloud needs predictable high performance
Two,It needs scalability across the entire platform
from cores to IO to memory,
and Three, it needs power, efficiency, and density.
In order to meet these needs,
we’ve developed the world's first cloud native processor,
the Ampere Altra Processor.
This is the first CPU that was designed from the ground up
for the unique needs of the modern cloud.
Our Ampere Altra processor has 80 cores
to deliver high performance
exceeding any other CPU in the market.
It's scalable across IO and across memory
with more IO bandwidth and more memory bandwidth
than any other processor in the server market.
And it's the most power efficient server processor in the market
as well from a processor perspective.
The Ampere Altra processor has 80 64bit Arm cores.
Each core is able to run at a sustained three gigahertz.
That's three gigahertz across all cores
across a wide variety of cloud workloads.
Again, it's important that we deliver consistent performance
regardless of how many users are on the platform
and regardless of what workloads are actually running.
In addition to the consistent turbo performance
that the Ampere Altra processor provides,
we've also designed the core to be single threaded
in order to provide better performance and security isolation.
The 80 cores are connected
by a high bandwidth mesh interconnect on a monolithic die.
We specifically chose to design this generation of processors
with a monolithic die
in order to avoid bottlenecks
that occur in current multi-chip architectures.
We've also emphasized a very large cache,
especially our L1 and L2 private caches.
We have a 64k instruction
and data L1 cache
and a full MB of private cache in the L2.
You don't have to worry about resource contention
from various cores.
Because L1 and L2 caches are private,and not shared.
Additionally, we've chosen to optimize these caches,
because are closer to the core,
which provide higher performance and lower latency.
The Ampere Altra processor
also has a single 32 MB shared system level cache.
Additionally,
the Ampere Altra processor has two 128 bit SIMD units
for vector and floating point performance,
since inference performance
is becoming increasingly important
as A.I. inference is being done
across a wide variety of servers and the infrastructure.
We've also introduced INT8 and FP16 support
for those who are using those numerical formats
for inference performance improvement.
Now expanding on the single threaded approach,
we specifically designed our cores
to avoid noisy neighbor issues.
This can show up in either performance or insecurity.
And having single threaded in cores
where no threads are sharing the execution engine,
the registers or the L1 or the L2 cache.
We avoid this type of resource contention.
And we are able to better provide security isolation
by reducing the attack surface.
This has become a particularly problematic issue
over last couple years with some of the side channel attacks
that have become prevalent in the industry.
In addition to the resource isolation,
the single-threaded cores
provide more consistent execution of instructions.
And in the case of a multi-threaded core,
two threads are executing at any given time.
These threads typically belong to two different users
on a single system.
As thread one executes,
eventually, it stalls either because of a cache miss or branch mispredict.
Thread two then begins executing.
Thread one doesn't get control again until thread two stalls.
This results in a larger total number of clock cycles
required in order to execute user 1's instructions.
In the case of a single-threaded core
like the Ampere Altra processor,
one is able to finish execution in a much more consistent
and predictable number of clock cycles.
Mean the each user has consistent latency.
The Ampere Altra processor
also has an optimized memory subsystem.
The processor supports eight memory channels of DDR
for memory at thirty-two hundred megahertz.
It also supports two DIMMs per channel
also at that maximum thirty-two hundred megahertz speed.
This allows us
to provide the maximum possible memory bandwidth
to feed the 80 cores in our processor.
We also support a total of four terabytes of memory
in a single socket system
or eight terabytes of memory in a dual socket system.
Not only does the Ampere Altra processor
have high memory bandwidth,
but we also deliver high IO bandwidth and fan out.
The processor supports one hundred and twenty eight PCIe Gen4 lanes
in a one socket platform.
and one hundred and ninety two PCIe Gen4 lanes
in a two socket platform.
This is more IO bandwidth and connectivity
than any other server platform in the market.
Not only do we support high IO bandwidth and fan out,
but also our x16 controller is bifurcatable down to x2.
This means that not only do you have the option
of connecting a lot of high bandwidth GPUs
via our x16 controllers.
but you can also connect many NVMe devices
in x2 mode for extremely high fan.
Another thing that's unique about the Ampere Altra processor
is that across our SKU stack
we're supporting the full range of IO memory
and features across all of the CPUs that we produce.
We'll support the full memory capacity,
full memory bandwidth,
full IO bandwidth as well as all of the features
like our RAS capabilities.
The Ampere Altra processor also support CCIX6 connectivity
at the platform level
for the attach of cache coherent accelerators
or storage class memory.
Our philosophy when it comes to IO
has been to embrace a multitude of flexible IO options,
especially those that rely on open standards like CCIX.
From a manageability perspective,
the Ampere Altra processor supports ARM SBSA level 4
so customers know that when they deploy our platforms
they work seamlessly with their existing infrastructure.
And also has the full range of performance
and thermal management features
that you would expect out of a server class processor.
The Ampere Altra processor
also has a full range of RAS features.
Now that I've told you about the Ampere Altra processor
and the way that we've designed it
for the needs of the modern cloud,
it's time to look at the actual data
to prove how well it performs.
The Ampere Altra processor
and its 80 cores outperform the 64 core AMD EPYC processor
and the 28 core Intel Xeon processor,
providing leadership performance
across all the performance sensitive workloads in the cloud.
Whether that's A.I. inference, transcode or database.
When we take power efficiency into account,
the lead extends even further.
The Ampere Altra processor leads the AMD EPYC processor by 14 percent
and the Intel Xeon processor by over 2 X.
This provides not only the scalability
to deploy the Ampere Altra processor out at the edge,
but also provides the right level of performance and power
for sensitive applications
like front end web and cloud gaming.
Another metric the cloud service providers look at
when they're assessing the scalability and density of solutions
is the number of cores that they can deploy per rack.
At some point they run into a rack level power limit
which constrains their ability to continue to deploy
more and more cores in the cloud
more cores mean more users,
more services, and more revenue.
Because the Ampere Altra processor
has the industry's lowest power per core
of any data center processor,
we're able to deliver more cores per rack
than any other solution.
The Ampere Altra Processor
delivers over thirty five hundred cores per rack.
As thirty-eight percent more cores per rack
than the AMD EPYC processor
and one hundred and seventy-three percent more cores
than the Intel Xeon processor.
The Ampere Altra processor is a leading solution
for maximum density in your data center.
Total cost of ownership
is also an important consideration for cloud service providers.
Once again,
the Ampere Altra processor leads both Intel and AMD.
The Ampere Altra processor provides 41 percent
more performance per TCO than the AMD EPYC processor
and 63 percent more performance per TCO
than the Intel Xeon processor.
This is true even after the recent price cuts
with the Intel Cascade Lake refresh.
What's really exciting is the fact
the Ampere Altra processor is sampling now.
More proud to be part of GIGABYTE
to bring Ampere Altra to the market.
This all starts with the MP32-AR0 motherboard,
which enables the full breadth of Ampere Altra capabilities:
up to 80 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 MP32 can provide 2x16 slots
and 5x8 slots with additional flexibility possible
around m.2 and the OCP NIC.
The form factor of MP32 is standard EATX,
which makes it an extremely flexible server board.
The MP32 goes into both the R272
2U single socket server series for cloud
and the E252-P30 2U edge computing server.
Just like Ampere,
GIGABYTE is spanning the cloud from hyperscale to edge.
And don’t worry,
there are many other platforms in the works.
At Ampere,
we will continue to deliver the world's highest performance,
most scalable and most power efficient processors,
uniquely designed for the needs of the modern cloud
and we’re excited to have GIGABYTE as a partner
in building a truly Cloud Native platform.