Ampere introduced Altra Max processors with up to 128 cores that are socket compatible with the existing Ampere Altra chips as a part of the expansion of its ARM-based cloud-native processor lineup. The new Altra Max processor is slated to begin sampling in the fourth quarter of 2020 with volume production in 2021.
Technical details
Ampere is targeting up to 128 cores with Altra Max along with 250W TDPs which suggests that these processors will trade clock speeds for core counts to stay within that 250W power budget.
Ampere Altra Max 128 core server processor
When we look at the technical details, the Altra Max processors share the same 1P and 2P platform and socket compatibility with the existing Altra chips along with having the same 8 channel DDR4-3200 memory support (2 DIMMS per channel, max of 4TB per socket), L1 and L2 cache, 128 lanes of PCI-E 4.0 I/O (192 lanes in 2P systems, 64 of which can be cache-coherent CCIX, and supporting bifurcation down to x2), 2 x 128-bit SIMD, AI inference acceleration (INT8/FP16), ARMv8.2+ architecture and “server-class” RAS error checking and reliability features.
Ampere Founder and CEO Renee James said,
Ampere Founder and CEO Renee James
“In March we introduced the industry’s first cloud-native processor, our 80-core Ampere Altra. Today, we are announcing the expansion of the Ampere Altra family with the first 128 core server processor, sampling in Q4 2020. We know customers need different products for specific workloads and decided to create a family of different products to meet their needs. We are very excited to share our rapid progress, driven by our continued commitment to deliver leadership performance and power efficiency,”
Ampere is targeting data centers running web hosting, database, cloud storage, and other cloud computing workloads as well as with edge computing/AI workloads with these chips.
