Cavium introduces ThunderX2

Caviumn has introduced the General Availability (GA) of ThunderX2, Cavium's second generation of Arm^®v8-A SoC processors for next generation data center, cloud and high-performance compute applications.

"ThunderX2 combines our second generation Armv8-A custom core that delivers core and socket level performance comparable to highest end incumbent server CPUs, with best-in-class memory bandwidth, memory capacity and rich IO configurations to provide a highly differentiated offering for the server market, greatly expanding our serviceable server TAM," said Gopal Hegde, Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Processor Group, Cavium. "We have been working with over 60 different partners including OEMs, ODMs, and independent software and hardware vendors to enable the seamless deployment of ThunderX2 based platforms, and we are pleased to announce general availability of ThunderX2."

ThunderX2 SoC Family Technical Specifications:

The ThunderX2 processor family is a single chip system on a chip (SoC). Key ThunderX2 features include:

• Single chip system on a chip (SoC) server CPU
• Core and socket level performance comparable to highest end Xeon Skylake Platinum CPUs
• Second generation of full custom Cavium Arm core
  • Quad Issue, Fully Out of Order
  • Full SMT support – 1, 2, 4 threads per core
  • Up to 2.5 GHz in normal mode, up to 3 GHz in Turbo mode
  • 3X single thread performance compared to ThunderX^®
• Up to 32 cores per socket delivering > 2.5-3X socket level performance compared to ThunderX
• Cache:
  • 32 KB L1 instruction and data cache, 256KB L2 per core
  • 32 MB distributed L3 cache
• Advanced server class RAS features covering memory, CPU, cache, CCPI2 and PCIe interfaces
• Advanced power management
  • On-chip management engine for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling across the chip
  • Full Turbo mode support
• Single and dual socket configuration support using 2^nd generation of Cavium Coherent Interconnect with > 2.5X coherent bandwidth compared to ThunderX
• System Memory
  • 8 DDR4 memory controllers per socket
  • Dual DIMM per memory controller, for a total of 16 DIMMs per socket
  • Up to 4 TB of memory in dual socket configuration
  • 33% higher memory bandwidth and memory capacity compared to Xeon Skylake Platinum CPUs
• Flexible IO:
  • Integrated 56 lanes of PCIe Gen3 interfaces, x1, x4, x8 and x16 support, 14 integrated PCIe controllers
  • Integrated SATAv3, GPIOs, USB interfaces
  • 16% higher IO bandwidth compared to Xeon Skylake Platinum CPUs

The ThunderX2 family includes over 40 different SKUs for both scale up and scale out applications, ranging from top bin 32 core 2.5GHz parts to 16-core 1.6GHz parts, mapping directly across Intel's Xeon Skylake server CPUs from highest end Platinum to low end SKUs. With list prices for volume SKUs (32 core 2.2GHz and below) ranging from $1795 to $800, the ThunderX2 family offers 2-4X better performance per dollar compared to Xeon Skylake family of processors.  The ThunderX2 family is fully compliant with Armv8-A architecture specifications as well as the Arm Server Base System Architecture and Arm Server Base Boot Requirements standards. 

The ThunderX2 SoC family is supported by a comprehensive software ecosystem, ranging from platform level systems management and firmware to commercial Operating Systems, Development Environments and Applications. Cavium has actively engaged in server industry standards groups such as UEFI and delivered numerous reference platforms to a broad array of community and corporate partners.  Cavium has also demonstrated its leadership role in the Open Source software community driving upstream kernel enablement and toolchain optimization, actively contributing to Linaro's Enterprise and Networking Groups, investing in key Linux Foundation projects such as DPDK, OpenHPC, OPNFV and Xen and sponsoring the FreeBSD Foundation's Armv8 server implementation.