ARM has introduced the Neoverse N1 platform, the blueprint for creating power-efficient processors licensed to institutions that can customize the original design to meet their specific requirements. Ampere licensed the Neoverse N1 platform to create the Ampere Altra, a processor that allows companies that own and manage their own fleet of servers, like ourselves, to take advantage of the expanding ARM ecosystem. We have been working with Ampere to determine whether Altra is the right processor to power our first generation of ARM edge servers.
The AWS Graviton2 is the only other Neoverse N1-based processor publicly accessible, but only made available through Amazon’s cloud product portfolio. We wanted to understand the differences between the two, so we compared Ampere’s single-socket server, named Mt. Snow, equipped with the Ampere Altra Q80-30 against an EC2 instance of the AWS Graviton2.
Cloudflare compared these two ARM server platforms and benchmarked them, and they give a ton of detail about them, too. Give it a few more years, and ARM will be a decidedly normal sight within data centres all over the world.
Letting ARM go was a monumentally stupid decision not just for prestige and wellbeing but also national security. It’s the UK’s “Nokia moment” (although actually one of a long string of Nokia moments but we are where we are). I hope who sold ARM off chokes on their money.
This is leading to an unexpected consolidation of important CPU makers here in Silicon Valley:
* Intel in Santa Clara
* AMD also in in Santa Clara
* nVidia about a mile down the road from AMD, and now also owns ARM
* RISC-V technically no headquarters, but established in Berkeley
Even server makers like Dell, hp, and SuperMicro were all spread across the town, fortunately hp is moving to Texas for some diversity.
NVIDIA doesn’t own ARM yet, there’s going to be a lot of regulatory resistance.
The RISC-V Foundation is headquartered in Switzerland.
The ownership of these critical technologies ought to be considered a national security matter by small nations who are lucky enough to have them.
Quite so. It’s why the US government places a ring of steel around Intel and Microsoft and social media companies. It’s why France and other European countries have legislation which permits state intervention on takeovers and projects when national economic and other security is an issue. That’s why Thailand will never cede control of TSMC without a transition plan including settled status with China and economic and trade developments to balance any loss. Just not in the UK though which increasingly post-Brexit under the Tory regime lacks any liking for international law, economic development, or social policy. The Tories bought wholesale the Chicago club economics and market forces and Laffer curve trickle down economics. Only the other week the only recently created committee for economic development was closed down. Worst economic growth in Europe. Slowest recovery. Most unequal society. The list goes on. They’re nuts.
The T in TSMC stands for Taiwan, not Thailand.
ARM is not as British as you think. It originated as a joint venture between 2 American and 1 British companies. The original design centers were distributed between Cambridge, Santa Clara, and Tokyo.
ARM is headquartered in England, last I checked Cambridge hasn’t left the UK. But with plate tectonics and Brexit who knows anymore….
ARM has been a global company since it’s founding.
I’m familiar with the history of ARM. Please do not tell me what I am thinking.
Good luck with that.
Noikia moments plural for sure, like keeping the Colossus secret, keeping public key encryption secret and the treatment of Alan Turing. Or Charles Babbage not finding a decent mechanic. And now the biggest news out of UK is Harry and Megan. It will become a theme park.