AMD announces ARM-based Opteron A1100 processor

AMD has historically only build CPUs using the x86 instruction set architecture, making them compete primarily with Intel and VIA in the CPU market.

Ever since the rise of ARM, enabling today's smart phones and tablets, with many people seeing their future in the entry level datacenter. AMD has seen the potential of ARM and has been working on providing ARM based solutions in order to diversify and gain more market share in the serverspace, resulting in their first ARM CPU, the Opteron A1100, a CPU that was formerly codenamed Seattle.

This new CPU from AMD using 8 64-bit ARM Cortex-A57 cores and comes with 1MB of L1 cache, 4MB of L2 cache and 8MB of L3 cache, making his ideal for entry level server applications. 

"AMD Opteron A1100 Series SOCs leverage AMD’s industry-leading expertise in designing enterprise-class server products and build on the rapidly developing ARM software and development ecosystem to establish a new category of high performance, energy efficient processors for cloud computing, storage and networking infrastructure."

ARM does have a newer and faster Cortex-A72 core design, but with the engineering time required to move to this new design would mean that AMD would have to delay their ARM CPUs to a later date, resulting in AMD using an older, but proven CPU core design. 

These CPUs will be able to use DDR3 or DDR4 memory and can access up to 128GB or memory in dual channel mode. AMD's A1100 series of ARM CPUs will be available at a variety of clock speeds and TDPs with between 4 and 8 cores. 

AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC specifications:

• Up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 cores with 4MB shared Level 2 and 8MB of shared Level 3 cache
• 2x 64-bit DDR3/DDR4 channels supporting up to 1866 MHz with ECC
• 2x 10Gb Ethernet network connectivity
• 8-lane PCI-Express® Gen 3 
• 14 SATA-3 ports

What makes AMD's new SOC truly different from other designs is their focus on IO, with support for 2 10Gigabit Ethernet controllers on the chip and up to 14 SATA ports, giving these CPUS a lot of options for networking or storage solutions. 

Right now ARM has never entered the server market in a big way, but with a big CPU company like AMD releasing a CPU for this purpose it is likely to gain a lot of interest. Hopefully this diversification will work out for the company. 

These Opteron 1100 series CPUs are being built on the 28nm manufacturing process, and is designed to have a TDP of between 25-32W and run below 80 degrees. 

Source: Overclock3d.net