Hi everyone!
I am Dong Wei, Arm Fellow and lead standards architect.
I am delighted and honored to have received the invitation from GIGABYTE to be here
and have this opportunity to talk to you
about Arm ServerReady and Arm Neoverse for Edge.
In this talk,
I will introduce Arm ServerReady and its ecosystem.
Then I will talk about Arm Neoverse for Edge and share Arm’s vision for Servers.
I will briefly touch upon two partners – Ampere and Marvell.
I will conclude the talk with Arm and GIGABYTE partnership.
So, let us start with the Introduction and History of Arm ServerReady and Ecosystem.
Why do we need the Standards?
Arm architecture supports a diverse ecosystem of devices.
Data center and Edge servers require uniformity in deployment and management
with generic off-the-shelf Operating Systems and Standard management frameworks.
This need is not limited to servers.
Operators want the OS to “Just work”
without needing customization or reworking.
Standards establish a contract among the ecosystem players
for a baseline framework,
ensuring interoperability and compatibility.
Ecosystem players are expected to innovate on top of the baseline framework,
to differentiate and add value in products to their customers.
Standardization paves the way to innovation!
We have Collaborated with companies across the server ecosystem
to create Arm standards for servers since 2011
with Arm Server Advisory Committee, or ServerAC.
We support open source projects for software and firmware.
We participate in Industry Standards to ensure compatibility with Arm servers.
This approach was first developed for servers,
hence the “Server Base” name in our specifications.
The focus is on generic off-the-shelf OS support.
This can equally apply to other market segments.
As you can see here, this standardization effort has led to strong OS support:
Microsoft Azure, Oracle Linux, VMware ESXi, AWS Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat,
SLES, to name a few.
We also have NetBSD and FreeBSD support as well.
Here, we see the Arm Server Standards Layers.
We established the Arm Standards with SBSA for minimum hardware requirements,
SBBR for minimum firmware requirements,
SBMR for minimum server manageability requirements,
and SBSG for security guidance.
These standards tie the Arm architecture with the industry standards
such as PCIe, UEFI, DMTF, Redfish, IPMI, and TCG.
In the future we will also be looking into requirements for CXL, CCIX and GenZ.
We are continually looking at improving the standards.
Arm ServerReady is our compliance program to allow customers to ensure
their products align with the SBSA and SBBR standards.
Certified partners can use the ServerReady ‘stamp’
to show their customers they have achieved this standard.
We have extensive list of Partners for Arm ServerReady v1.0 so far.
As you can see, GIGABYTE is one of the major players in the program.
Here is an example.
The GIGABYTE R281-T91 is a rack mounted server based on Marvell Thunder X2.
This server is already certified with Arm ServerReady v1.0.
We are current working with GIGABYTE on the R272-P30
based on the recently announced Ampere Altra processor.
Now let’s talk about Arm Neoverse for Edge.
Arm Neoverse is enabling the Next Generation Cloud-to-Edge Infrastructure
by delivering high-performance, secure, and scalable Arm Neoverse solutions.
Today,
Arm has close to 30% market share across the global infrastructure
from cellular base stations to routers and servers.
We have a dedicated roadmap
delivering 30% per generation performance improvements.
We believe the data consumption is revolutionizing the infrastructure.
This environment of disruption of the traditional infrastructure is the context in
which we launched Arm Neoverse in 2018,
our brand name and roadmap of products.
Neoverse is the cloud to edge infrastructure foundation
for a world of 1 trillion intelligent devices at the edge.
We has dominant market share in intelligent endpoint devices at the edge,
and this gives us a unique perspective on the data flows,
security requirements, connectivity,
and other design challenges of these devices and what they will need
in the internet infrastructure to support emerging use cases in 5G.
Scalability of the IP is a key aspect of our designs.
This begins with the CMN mesh interconnect,
which is designed to scale from small 2x2 and 2x3 configurations
up to 5x5 and 8x8 configurations enabling a range from 4 to 256 cores.
Similarly the system cache,
DDR channels and bandwidth are also scalable.
This scalability allows one set of IP
to be used to create a range of products,
and for a single design to scale downward on a subsequent
or in parallel tape out to address different market segments –
this is particularly attractive
as the edge cloud and edge gateway segment continues to develop.
Being able to leverage hyperscale designs,
scaled down efficiently for the edge gateways and 5G compute nodes,
is a key benefit of Neoverse.
Let’s touch on our vision for the Server Future.
Neoverse is built on 3 foundational pillars:
High performance, secure IP and architectures.
Our own roadmap of products can be used in combination
with custom CPU microarchitectures build on a common Aarch64 ISA
that is the basis for software optimization from cloud to edge.
Each product generation comes with increases in performance and security
at the CPU, architecture, platform, and system level.
Diverse solutions and ecosystem –
designing with Arm means you can choose from a diverse set of suppliers,
and from a diverse set of business models –
including vertical integration (you can build your own),
merchant silicon suppliers, ASIC design, or a hybrid approach.
Diversity also means you have design freedom
to integrate your own IP components
with ours using a range of bus architectures.
Scalable from hyperscale to the edge –
Our product offering is designed for scalability
and can be configured from 4 to 8 core designs
up through 64, 128, and higher core count using the same IP.
I/O, memory bandwidth, and coherent acceleration and expansion
are all similarly scalable,
enabling designs of unprecedented parallel scale in the cloud,
down to the most efficient designs for edge gateways and RAN.
Faster general-purpose compute used to be good enough for all workloads,
but now heterogeneous compute is the way
for new interfaces and system memory architecture.
Arm is already offering CCIX-based solutions
and is working to support CXL in the coherent mesh network (CMN) IP.
Arm offers Scalable IP system solutions from cloud to edge.
Here is a diagram showing ecosystem readiness
in Networking, OS, Containers/Virtualization,
Language & Library, Workloads, CI/CD all on Arm.
We are also seeing exciting new SoCs from our partners.
Ampere recently announced its new Altra SoC.
Altra offers predictable high performance, high scalability and power efficiency.
It supports up to 80 cores,
coherent mesh-based interconnect and high memory bandwidth and density.
It has industry leading power/core,
cache-coherent multi-socket support and flexible I/O connectivity.
Altra also has advanced system,
security and power management capabilities.
On the Marvell ThunderX front
Marvell has a proven track record in processors
with 100s of millions of CPUs shipped,
15+ years of high-performance multi-core CPU expertise.
Marvell’s Thunder X3 processor supports up to 96 high performance
custom-designed Arm v8.3+ cores with 4-threads/core,
8 DDR4-3200 memory controllers,
64 lanes of PCIe 4.0,
16 PCIe controllers per socket,
128 lanes, 32 controllers in dual-socket configuration,
4 128-bit SIMD (Neon) Units and Enterprise class RAS and virtualization capabilities.
Finally,
I would like to present GIGABYTE’s partnership
with Arm and leadership in the Arm server market.
GIGABYTE offers a very comprehensive Server Product Portfolio
with R (rackmount), H (high density), G (high performance), S (storage),
W (tower), N (networking), E (edge) and OCP Series.
GIGABYTE also has a “diversification” line-up using common design
for Intel Xeon, AMD Epyc and Arm-based servers like R181 and R281 series.
Here are a few GIGABYTE Arm server milestones:
In 2013, GIGABYTE announced worldwide first ARM64 server motherboard
with Applied Micro ARM64 and new server family
based on Cavium’s ARM-based SoCs.
In 2016, GIGABYTE released Cavium ThunderX server to market.
In 2018, GIGABYTE released Arm ServerReady certified
Cavium ThunderX2 server to market.
This year in 2020,
GIGABYTE plan to release Ampere Altra and Marvell TunderX3 server to market.
Congratulations GIGABYTE!
And thank you everyone!
Enjoy the GIGABYTE Virtual Show!
Thank you very much.