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AMD will launch ‘Seattle’, its first ARM chip, in H2 2014

by Mark Tyson on 19 June 2013, 10:45

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD), ARM

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AMD has announced that it will have its 64-bit ARM processor ready and in production for the second half of 2014. This will be the first such server SoC made by a major chipmaker. The new processor, codenamed ‘Seattle’, is touted to provide “category-leading throughput as well as setting the bar in performance-per-watt”. The new processor will come with eight cores initially, followed by a 16 core version, and offer between two and four times the performance of AMD’s recently announced AMD Opteron X-Series processor.

These chips were announced last year but we have seen and heard more details now that AMD has provided its server roadmap for 2013-2014. ‘Seattle’ will be based upon the ARM Cortex-A57 core and is expected to run at or greater than 2 GHz. It will be initially produced in 8-core designs but these will be followed up by 16-core versions.

The new SoC boasts two to four times the performance of AMD’s recently launched Opteron X-Series processors but with a “significant improvement in compute-per-watt.” The ‘Seattle’ SoC will support up to 128GB of DRAM and has implemented “extensive offload engines for better power efficiency and reduced CPU loading, server caliber encryption, and compression and legacy networking including integrated 10GbE”. AMD informs us that these will be its first chips to integrate Freedom™ Fabric (an IP gained in the acquisition of SeaMicro) for dense computing systems directly onto the chip. While production is scheduled for H2, sampling of the chips at 28nm will begin in Q1 of 2014.

Why ARM will win in the long run

Ahead of this official server roadmap press release AMD updated reporters on the planning behind its business initiatives. IT Portal reports that at the conclusion of the presentation AMD showed off the slide below, entitled “Why ARM will win in the long run?” The slide made a number of claims but central to its thrust was “In the history of compute – smaller, lower cost, higher volume CPUs have always won”. It predicts that following ARM’s server chips launch in 2014 headed by ‘Seattle’ it will win over “substantial market share”.



HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Ah, but will it run Crysis?
Interesting stuff.

Now, I wonder if Intel will go ARM or weather their vision will counter the rise of ARM…….
What more interesting is that AMD will have the first 64 bit ARM server SOC out,and its taking over from Jaguar in only a year too.
shaithis
Now, I wonder if Intel will go ARM or whether their vision will counter the rise of ARM…

They had XScale after buying StrongARM from DEC, didn't find much value and sold it to Marvell in 2006. Still hold a full licence…

I seriously doubt they would “go ARM” for an instruction set in any major product, x86-64 has a huge compatibility bonus that's still hard to ignore and given that Atom has matched the ARM licensees efforts on power characteristics it's not likely Intel will see the need to change their main instruction set.

ARM based chips are still lacking in many areas and won't be universally replacing beefy Xeon/Opteron CPUs anytime soon, many workloads would show little or no advantage from a highly parallel many-wimpy-core approach and some are very definitely not suited. Also the argument of big iron virtualisation vs micro-servers is far from settled, virtualisation carries a major advantage in that large CPU power is available if needed whereas micro-servers must always operate with a restricting CPU.