Cavium Releases New ARM Server SOC's Optimized for Data Center Workloads

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Cavium, a provider of semi-conductor services and solutions, announces the second generation of workload optimized ARM server SoCs (system on a chip), the Thunder X2. The latest processor delivers 3X performance over its preceder Thunder X

ThunderX2 is a workload optimized ARMv8 processor built in 14nm FinFET process. It is fully compliant with ARMv8.2 architecture as well as ARM's Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard.

The new ThunderX2 aims to address high performance volume servers deployed by Public/Private Cloud and Telco data centers and high performance computing applications. It is optimized for key Data Center workloads that include compute, security, storage, data analytics, network function virtualization (NFV) and distributed databases.

The ThunderX2 also targets applications that demand high single thread performance that include web search, graph analytics, a variety of enterprise applications such as massively parallel processing (MPP) databases, data warehousing and enterprise HPC applications such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and reservoir modelling.

 The ThunderX2 features an ARM based server class SoC that scales up to 54 cores with up to 3.0 GHz core frequency. It includes single and dual socket configuration support using 2nd generation of Cavium Coherent Interconnect. It has the largest integrated I/O capacity with 100s of Gigabits ofI/O bandwidth using integrated 25Gbps SerDes.

The ThunderX2’s system memory includes 6 DDR4 memory controllers per socket, Dual DIMM per memory controller, for a total of 12 DIMMs per socket. It has up to 3200MHz in 1 DPC and 2966MHz in 2 DPC configuration and supports up to 3 TB of memory in dual socket configuration. It also includes full system virtualization for low latency from virtual machine to IO enabled through Cavium virtSOC technology and support for PCIe Gen3 x16 along with integrated 10/25/40/50/100GbE and SATAv3 ports.

The ThunderX2 also includes hundreds of integrated hardware accelerators for security, storage, networking and virtualization applications.

ThunderX2 family of processors includes FOUR workload optimized processors for targeting different workloads. They are:

ThunderX2_CP:  Optimized for cloud compute workloads such as private and public clouds, web serving, web caching, web search, commercial HPC workloads such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and reservoir modeling. This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE network Interfaces and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. It also includes accelerators for virtualization and vSwitch offload.

ThunderX2_ST: Optimized for big data, cloud storage, massively parallel processing (MPP) databases and Data warehousing workloads. This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE network interfaces, PCIe Gen3 interfaces and SATAv3 interfaces. It also includes hardware accelerators for data protection/ integrity/security, user to user efficient data movement.

ThunderX2_SC:  Optimized for secure web front-end, security appliances and cloud RAN type workloads. This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE interfaces and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. Integrated hardware accelerators include Cavium’s industry leading, 5th generation NITROX security technology with acceleration for IPSec, RSA and SSL.

ThunderX2_NT: Optimized for media servers, scale-out embedded applications and NFV type workloads. This family supports multiple 10/25/40/50/100 GbE interfaces. It also includes OCTEON style hardware accelerators for packet parsing, shaping, lookup, QoS and forwarding.

"ThunderX2 combines our next generation core that will deliver significantly higher single thread performance with next generation IO and hardware accelerators to provide a compelling value proposition for the server market and greatly expand the serviceable server TAM," says Syed Ali, President and CEO of Cavium. "ThunderX2 will enable flexible, scalable and fully optimizable servers for next generation software defined data centers."