AMD announced the pending release of the A-Series 64-bit ARM based server processor, codenamed “Seattle,” at the Open Compute Project Summit this week along with a development platform that includes a software suite and evaluation board. AMD is working with tech industry leaders to build a 64-bit software ecosystem around the server CPU that would allow for the development of compilers, simulator, hypervisors, operating systems, and applications in support of web and storage data centers.
According to AMD, the A-Series development platform will include a standard Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot and Linux environment. The Linux flavor will be the Red Hat sponsored, and community supported, Fedora project. According to AMD, the Opteron A-Series platform will be supported by a broad set of tools and software that includes platform device drivers, Apache web server, MySQL database engine, PHP scripting language and Java versions 7 and 8. The development kit will be bundled with a Micro-ATX form factor that will house the AMD A1100 CPU.
The AMD Opteron A1100 Series chip is based on 28-nanometer processing technology and supports:
- 4 or 8 core ARM Cortex-A57 processors;
- Maximum of 4 MB of shared L2 and 8 MB of shared L3 cache;
- Configurable dual DDR3 or DDR4 memory channels with ECC at up to 1866 MT/second;
- Up to 4 SODIMM, UDIMM or RDIMMs;
- 8 lanes of PCI-Express Gen 3 I/O;
- 8 Serial ATA 3 ports;
- 2 – 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports;
- ARM TrustZone technology for enhanced security;
- Crypto and data compression co-processors.
“The needs of the data center are changing. A one-size-fits-all approach typically limits efficiency and results in higher-cost solutions,” said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, corporate vice president and general manager of the AMD server business unit. “The new ARM-based AMD Opteron A-Series processor brings the experience and technology portfolio of an established server processor vendor to the ARM ecosystem and provides the ideal complement to our established AMD Opteron x86 server processors.”
AMD also announced it would contributing a new micro-server design based on the AMD Opteron A-Series as part of the Open Compute Project’s specification for a common slot architecture for motherboards contributed by Facebook in 2013 dubbed “Group Hug.”
Low power, and lower cost, ARM based servers have long been recognized as a requirement for data centers that need to become energy efficient, cheaper to operate, and more environmentally friendly. However, up until now, the 64-bit ARM server chip has only been an intangible and there has been a lack of enthusiasm from customers for the 32-bit server processor when applications and users demanded speed that Intel and AMD could provide in the form of fully powered 64-bit CPU options.
