ARM news

[stevea]

http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/ar...r-platform.php

ARM, Red Hat and AppliedMicro Aim to Develop Disruptive 64-bit Server Platform
25 October 2012

Collaborate to Deliver Disruptive Hardware and Open Source Software for the Cloud, Data Center and Enterprise

CAMBRIDGE, England, RALEIGH, N.C. & SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 25, 2012 – ARM, Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) and Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ:AMCC) today announced a collaboration that aims to develop a disruptive 64-bit server design platform to dramatically lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of cloud computing, data centers and enterprises.

Fully compliant with the ARMv8 architecture, the AppliedMicro X-Gene™ Server on a Chip™ has been purpose-built for cloud and enterprise server deployment to deliver unprecedented low power, high performance and integration, with the goal of changing the way servers are designed for cloud, data center and enterprise applications.

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, is actively engaged in developing support within the Fedora community for the new 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, also known as AArch64.

[Flounder]

It's good to see they are finally working on developments for a 64 bit chip of the ARM architecture. Just looking around on the ARM website yesterday they only had 32 bit chips, but I guess it doesn't matter since those chips are used in devices that don't have any more than 4 GiB of RAM. It would be nice if ARM in the coming years provided a nice desktop alternative to Intel.

[jpollard]

about time!

Something more efficient than x86 has been needed for about 15 years now.

[DBelton]

I too agree.. It's about time!

After nearly 30 years, ARM appears to be shaping up into a pretty good platform. Maybe that ARM server isn't too far off in the future now.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by Flounder

It's good to see they are finally working on developments for a 64 bit chip of the ARM architecture. Just looking around on the ARM website yesterday they only had 32 bit chips, ....

Whaa ? Search for ARMv8, architecture. It's been around (the architecture definition) for well over a year.
http://www.arm.com/products/processo...chitecture.php

AMCC'x "X-Gene" seems to be the first to showcase working 64bit ARM hardware (an FPGA mock hardware) A YEAR AGO ....
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-n...RM-server-chip
http://www.apm.com/media/corporate_e...l_panel_at_arm

Gcc has their compiler changes like ...
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTIxMzU

64bit ARM changes will be merged into the 3.7 kernel shortly.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTE5NjQ

but I guess it doesn't matter since those chips are used in devices that don't have any more than 4 GiB of RAM. It would be nice if ARM in the coming years provided a nice desktop alternative to Intel.

Nah, there are LOTS of big players trying to use ARM in servers on a developmental basis - it's not all embedded,
http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterp...project-copper
http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/h...l-the-boys-to/

Rumors are that Samsung, TaiwanSemi (both much bigger than AMCC) are working on the 64bit ARM too.

So there are lot's of higher performance lower power ARM parts coming to market. The main question is - how many will be locked-down for Win8 only by SecureBoot ?

[jpollard]

Hopefully, none of the servers.

I say that by thinking about the address range provided - wasting space for simple memory is not cost efficient when you pass about 2G. You end up wasting space for the memory on a chip with the complex layering used by CPUs where memory is (nearly) a 2D item.

And who wants to buy another server just to add another 16 or 32 G of memory?