ARM brings stronger CPU cores for server processors

ARM announces new CPU cores from the “Neoverse” series for cloud servers, high-performance computing, network processors and SmartNICs. This includes the Neoverse V2 “Demeter”, which Nvidia uses, among other things, in the “Grace” server processor announced for 2023.

Neoverse V2 is based on the ARMv9 microarchitecture version and is designed for L2 caches with a capacity of 2 MB and a system level cache (SLC) of up to 512 MB.

The SVE2 instruction set extension is intended to accelerate floating-point and AI data processing and no longer only processes two 256-bit values ​​in one cycle, but alternatively also four 128-bit values ​​(4x 128b). In addition, Neoverse V2 cores process the data formats BFloat16 and Int8.

ARM Neoverse V2 with ARMv9 and SVE2

(Image: ARM)

That’s not all: ARM has also significantly improved the “fabric” for connecting all CPU cores in a server processor. Neoverse V2 is designed for DDR5 memory controllers (also LPDDR5 like Grace). Also planned are controllers/PHYs for PCI Express 5.0 including CXL 2.0.

There are also security features such as Pointer Authentication (PAC), Privileged Access Never (PAN) and Memory Tagging Extension (MTE).

Neoverse cores with PCIe 5.0 and CXL 2.0 can also be coupled as chiplets via UCIe with other UCIe chiplets to form larger processors.

ARM future plans

After 2023, the Poseidon platform with the next V core generation is to follow Demeter, which will bring PCIe 6.0 and CXL 3.0, among other things.

The “V” cores, including vector extensions, aim for the highest single-threading performance; Amazon AWS relies on Neoverse V1 for the Graviton3.

At the same time, ARM is also developing the Neoverse “N” series, which should enable maximum computing power per physical processor (performance per socket). Ampere uses Neoverse N1 in the Altra Max.

There are also the particularly efficient Neoverse-E cores for applications where power consumption or cooling are limited.

(ciw)

To home page