Applied Micro Category - CNX Software

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

ADLINK Ampere Altra Dev Kit features ATX motherboard with 32 to 80-core Arm COM-HPC CPU module

ADLINK Ampere Altra Dev Kit is an “IoT prototyping kit” based on an ATX motherboard fitted with a COM-HPC-ALT Server Type Size E module powered by an Ampere Altra 32, 64, or 80-core Arm Neoverse N1 server processor, and supporting up to 768GB DDR4 memory. It’s basically the same hardware as found in the Ampere Altra Developer Platform (AADP), but without the tower and power supply, nor optional features like liquid cooling or 10GbE interfaces. Ampere Altra Dev Kit (AADK) specifications and content: Computer-on-Module – COM-HPC Server Type Size E Ampere Altra module with Ampere Altra 32 to 80-core 64-bit Arm Neoverse N1 processor up to 1.7/2.2/2.6 GHz (32/64/80 cores, TPD: 60W to 175W), up to 768 DDR4 ECC memory Mainboard – COM-HPC Server Base carrier board Storage – 2x M.2 slot for NVMe SSD Video – VGA port Audio – 3.5mm audio jack Networking – 1x Gigabit Ethernet Expansion […]

April 25, 2020April 25, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 47 Comments

Ampere eMAG 64bit Arm Workstation Enables Native Arm Development

Over the last few years, several companies have come up with 64-bit Arm workstation to allow developers to test Arm code natively which may be important to avoid network delays or test applications requiring video or graphics. Those started to become available in 2018 from the relatively low-end 24-core Cortex-A53 Linaro “Synquacer” Developerbox to the much more powerful (and expensive) GIGABYTE ThunderXStation Workstation powered by up to two 32-core ThunderX2 processors. In the fall of 2019, SolidRun started to ship HoneyComb LX2K 16-core Arm Workstation motherboard with and NXP LX2160A 16-core Cortex-A72 processor that offers significantly more performance than the Linaro Box at a reasonable price ($750). While reading a recent Anandtech post with photos of an engineering sample, I found out Avantek was also offering the Ampere eMAG 64bit Arm Workstation powered by an Ampere eMAG 8180 32-core server processor. Ampere eMAG 64-bit Arm workstation specifications: SoC – Ampere […]

March 4, 2020March 4, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Ampere Altra Announces 80-Core Arm Neoverse N1 Server Processor & Reference Designs

The first 64-bit Arm server processor was announced almost 9 years ago. Applied Micro X-Gene was found in several servers, and the company updated X-Gene family until it got bought by Ampere in 2018. The latter has now announced the first of their own design with Ampere Altra, an 80-core Arm Neoverse N1 server processor made for data centers. Ampere Altra specifications: Processor Subsystem 80x Arm v8.2+ 64-bit CPU cores up to 3.0 GHz with Sustained Turbo 64 KB L1 I-cache, 64 KB L1 D-cache per core, 1 MB L2 cache per core, 32 MB System Level Cache (SLC) 2x full-width (128b) SIMD Coherent mesh-based interconnect, distributed snoop filtering System memory 8x 72-bit DDR4-3200 channels ECC, Symbol-based ECC, and DDR4 RAS features Up to 16 DIMMs and 4 TB/socket System Resources Full interrupt virtualization (GICv3) Full I/O virtualization (SMMUv3) Enterprise server-class RAS Connectivity 128 lanes of PCIe Gen4 8 x8 […]

March 11, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

MACOM X-Gene 3 Server-on-Chip is Equipped with 32 64-bit ARM Cores Clocked at 3.0 GHz

MACOM, having recently completed the acquisition of AppliedMicro, has now announced sampling of X-Gene 3 Server-on-a-Chip (SoC) with 16-nanometer FinFET process technology. X-Gene 3 features 32-core ARMv8 cores clocked at up to 3.0 GHz, 8 DDR4 channels, 42 PCIe Gen 3 lanes, SATA 3.0 and USB 3.0. X-Gene 3 SoC key features and specifications CPU – 32x 64-bit ARMv8 cores @ up to 3.0 GHZ (base freq.) / 3.3 GHz (turbo freq.) Cache – 32MB L3 cache Memory IF – 8x DDR4-2667 channels with ECC and RAS supporting up to 16DIMMs for up to 1TB RAM Storage – SATA 3.0 interfaces 42x PCIe Gen 3 lanes with 8x controllers USB 3.0 interfaces Max. TDP – 125 Watts (Expected) Process – 16nm FinFET TSMC X-Gene 3 is said to offer 4 to 6 better performance compared to X-Gene 2, and match “comparable x86 processors in CPU throughput, per-thread performance and power […]

February 24, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

LEDE 17.01.0 “Reboot” Router Operating System Released

LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment) is a fork of OpenWrt after some disagreements between developers, and while there are talks about merging OpenWrt and LEDE development, this is not done yet, and LEDE 17.01 has been released a few days ago. Some of notable LEDE 17.01 changes include: Linux kernel updated to version 4.4.50 (from 3.18 in Chaos Calmer) Update to dnsmasq 2.76, busybox 1.25.1, mbedtls 2.4.0, openssl 1.0.2k Improved Security Features Improved Networking Support Added new targets: apm821xx (AppliedMicro APM821xx) arc770 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC 770D) archs38 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC HS38) armvirt (QEMU ARM Virtual Machine) ipq806x (Qualcomm Atheros IPQ806X) layerscape (NXP Layerscape) zynq (Xilinx Zynq 7000 SoCs) Reorganized x86 target – Drop dedicated Xen DomU target, merged with x86/generic * Enable AES-NI support Build system improvements Image Builder / SDK – Rework library bundling to allow for better portability between different Linux distributions, added support for building kernel modules […]

February 24, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

HeliX2-COMExpress Module Powered by Applied Micro HeliX 2 ARMv8 Processor Supports up to 32GB RAM, 10GbE Ethernet, SATA 3, and PCie

Theobroma Systems has introduced a new COM Express module, named HeliX2-COMExpress, powered by Applied Micro HeliX 2 ARMv8 server SoC and probing 10GBe, SATA, and PCIe connectivity, as well as SO-DIMM slots for up to 32GB RAM for embedded industrial applications. HeliX2-COMExpress specifications: Processor – Applied Micro APM887104-H2 “HeliX 2” with 2 to 4 ARMv8 cores up to 2.0GHz, 32KB L1 I-cache and 32KB L1 D-Cache (per core) with parity-protection, shared 256KB L2 cache (per pair of cores) with ECC protection, and 2MB L3 cache with ECC protection System Memory – 2x 204-pin SO-DIMM slot for up to 32GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz Storage – Serial ATA SATA Gen 3 (integrated), up to 16MBit SPI NOR flash on-module, up to 128GB eMMC flash on-module Connectivity 1x 10 Gigabit-Ethernet (XAUI) 1x 1000Base-T with on-module 10/100/1000 PHY 1x RGMII Gigabit Ethernet 2x SGMII Gigabit Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 (one dual-role […]

May 1, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linaro 15.04 Release with Linux 4.0 and Android 5.1

Linaro 15.04 has been released with Linux 4.0 (baseline), Linux 3.10.74 and 3.14.39 (LSK), and Android 5.1.1. Other noticeable changes include support for the new DragonBoard 410c 96boards compliant board, the addition of A80 Optimusboard (Allwinner A80) to Android Kitkat build, Hisilicon D01 support added to the Debian installer, and support for Ubuntu ARM64 Gnome rootfs. Highlights of the release: Linux Linaro 4.0-2015.04 updated linaro-android topic: aosp/android-3.18 branch has been merged GATOR topic: version 5.20.1 updated integration-linaro-vexpress64 topic by ARM LT (FVP Base and Foundation models, and Juno support) updated topic from Qualcomm LT (IFC6410 and DB410c boards support): Resource Power Manager (RPM) – MSM Shared Memory Driver (SMD) driver quite some changes under drivers/gpu/drm/ related to adv7511 and adv7533 support ASoC support for QCOM platforms external Connector Class (extcon) support (used for USB VBUS and ID detection) Linaro builds of AOSP 15.04 baseline updated to android-5.1.1_r1 updated Nexus 10 […]

April 14, 2015April 15, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

HPC Performance & Power Usage Comparison – Intel Xeon E3 vs Intel Atom C2720 vs Applied Micro X-Gene 1 vs IBM Power 8

Last year, the CERN published a paper comparing Applied Micro X-Gene (64-bit ARM) vs Intel Xeon (64-bit x86) Performance and Power Usage, and they’ve now added IBM Power 8 and Intel Atom Avoton C2750 processor to the mix in a new presentation entitled “A look beyond x86: OpenPOWER & AArch64“. So four systems based on Intel Xeon E3-1285L, Intel Atom C2750, Applied Micro X-Gene 1, and IBM Power 8 were compared, all running Fedora 21, except the HP Moonshot 1500 ARM plarform running Ubuntu 14.04 and an older kernel. All four systems use gcc 4.9.2, and Racktivity intelligent PDUs were used for power measurement. I’ll just share some of their results, you can read the presentation, or go through the benchmark results to find out more. HEP-SPEC06 is a new High Energy Physics (HEP) benchmark for measuring CPU performance developed by the HEPiX Benchmarking Working Group, and here it’s not […]