AppliedMicro Unveils ARMv8 64-bit Apache 2 Implementation for X-Gene SoC

Last year, Applied Micro announced their Gene-X 64-bit ARMv8 core at ARM Techcon 2011, and showed a minimal demo based on Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA booting Linux ARM 64-bit  to the command line. Since then, the company has made progress and just announced the availability of an Apache 2 web server implementation on their 64-bit ARMv8 X-Gene Server-on-Chip. This is the very first implementation of a  fully-functional server platform running a real-world application on 64-bit ARM-based processor, said Vinay Ravuri, Vice President and General Manager of Processor Products at AppliedMicro. The platform is now capable of running a full LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) software stack. Back in 2011, the company announced ARMv8 support for Linux  would be developed by Redhat and be available in Fedora. This 64-bit ARM web server implementation enable OEMs, ODMs, Cloud Service Providers, Independent Software Vendors and other development partners to conduct early stage performance benchmarking and […]

Midgard architecture for Embedded GPUs (Mali-T604 / Mali T658)

I’ve attended a webinar entitled “Harness the power and flexibility of the Midgard architecture for Embedded GPUs” presented Steve Steele, Product Manager at ARM Media Processing Division and sponsored by EETimes. Steve starts to talk about the current GPU architecture “Utgard” used in Mali-200, Mali-300 and Mali-400MP which allows resolutions up to 1080p and are used in many smartphones today including Samsung Galaxy S2 (Mali-400MP) which provides great graphics performance. He then explains how mobile devices are used today and what performance we may except in the future: Mobile As Main compute platform: New UI and Augmented Reality Social Networks and emails Content Creation/consumption 1 Device to multiple screen (e.g LCD screen and TV via HDMI) Evolving Processing Demand: Graphics Complexity multiplied by 25 Increase in screen size (1080p resolution support). Graphics API: Khronos OpenGL ES, Microsoft DirectX 11 Compute API: OpenCL, Renderscript Compute and Direct Compute. After this overview, […]

Applied Micro X-Gene 64-Bit ARMv8 Server-on-Chip Presentation

Applied Micro Showcases World’s First 64-bit ARMv8 Core at ARM Techcon 2011, Santa Clara California. The day ARM announced the first 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set architecture, AppliedMicro unveiled the launch of the industry’s first 64-bit ARM “Server-on-a-Chip” solution. Most of the presentation is used to explain the competitive advantage this platform would bring including TCO reduced by 30%. There is also an (underwhelming) demonstration of X-Gene based on Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA running Server SoC consisting of ARM-64 CPU complex, coherent CPU fabric, high performance I/O network, memory subsystem along with fully functional SoC subsystem. The FPGA platform and tools will be available for customer evaluation by the first half of 2012. Redhat will be in charge of implementing ARMv8 support in Linux and this will be part of Fedora for ARM in the future. The platform will run LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/Python. The silicon will be available in […]

ARM Unveils 64-Bit ARMv8 Architecture

ARM has just disclosed the technical of the ARMv8 architecture (to selected partners), featuring 64-bit instruction set support, extended virtual addressing, and backwards-compatible 32-bit support, so that software designed for ARMv7 (Cortex-A family) cores will run on the ARMv8 architecture. Here are the key points of the press release: The ARMv8 architecture consists of two main execution states, AArch64 and AArch32. The AArch64 execution state introduces a new instruction set, A64 for 64-bit processing. The AArch32 state supports the existing ARM instruction set. The key features of the current ARMv7 architecture, including TrustZone®, virtualization and NEON™ advanced SIMD, are maintained or extended in the ARMv8 architecture. … In support of the introduction of the ARMv8 architecture, ARM is working to ensure a robust design ecosystem to support the 64-bit instruction set. The ARM compiler and Fast Models with ARMv8 support have already been made available to key ecosystem partners. Initial […]