Cavium Introduces ThunderX™: A 2.5 GHz, 48 Core Family of Workload Optimized Processors for Next Generation Data Center and Cloud Applications

World's Highest Performing Power Optimized 64-bit ARM®-based Server SOC

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Jun 03, 2014, 02:59 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., and TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Computex -- Cavium, Inc., (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for enterprise, data center, cloud, wired and wireless networking, today announced the introduction of a new game changing category of processors that are workload optimized for a range of applications in the cloud and data center. The 2.5GHz 48 core ThunderX is the world's highest performing low-power 64-bit ARMv8 SoC family of workload optimized processors with a range of SKUs and form factors for high performance volume compute, storage, secure compute and networking specific workloads.

Market Dynamics for Cloud and Next Generation Data Centers

Data center infrastructure transformation is one of the key trends driving IT spending in 2014 and beyond. Analysts predict that the global data center infrastructure market, including servers, storage, networking, security and virtualization, will reach $128 billion in 2014. Key trends driving this disruption include rapid adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) enabled by Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) with virtualized on demand compute, Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Storage (SDS). The continued growth and adoption of Open Source Software with almost 100 billion lines of code and nearly 10 million active developers is also radically changing installed base software requirements.

The current data center market has been serviced with processors that are designed with "one size fits all" approach and are based on a legacy control plane architecture where many of the networking, storage, virtualization and security functions are implemented in software or additional chips leading to huge system and rack level inefficiencies specific to performance, latency, footprint, power and cost. The realities of today's new data center environment drive the need for an innovative SOC micro architecture that enables optimized solution development.

New Category of Workload Optimized Processors: Foundation for the Next Generation Data Center

Workload optimized processors delivering high performance and highly optimized solutions for a range of applications in the cloud and data center infrastructure. The key features include highly optimized full custom processor cores, highly efficient caching subsystem, high memory bandwidth and capacity and end to end system virtualization. They also include high bandwidth customized I/O configurations along with application specific hardware accelerators delivering overall low end to end latency.

Cavium has a long history of delivering high-performance multi-core workload-optimized processors for networking, security and data plane processing applications through their highly successful OCTEON^® and OCTEON Fusion^® and NITROX^® and Neuron Search^® processor families.

Introducing the ThunderX CN88XX Family of Processors

ThunderX consists of 24 to 48 cores and is the fifth generation of multi-core processor design from Cavium targeting high performance volume servers and appliances for large data centers and cloud infrastructure. This family of processors offers workload optimized SKU's targeted for compute, storage, networking and secure compute segments.

This product family is based on highly efficient full custom processor cores designed by Cavium in 28nm process technology under architectural license from ARM. It is fully compliant with ARMv8 architecture as well as ARM's Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard while bringing to market dramatic enhancements that include:

The first ARM based SoC that scales up to 48 cores with up to 2.5 GHz core frequency with 78K of I-Cache and 32K of D-Cache along with 16MB of L2 cache.
The first ARM based SOC to be fully cache coherent across dual sockets using Cavium Coherent Processor Interconnect (CCPI™)
Integrated I/O capacity with 100s of Gigabits of I/O bandwidth
Four DDR3/4 72 bit memory controllers capable of supporting 2400 MHz memories with 1TB of memory in a dual socket configuration
Hundreds of integrated hardware accelerators for security, storage, networking and virtualization applications.
Standard based low latency Ethernet fabric interconnecting thousands of ThunderX™ nodes in 2D and 3D configurations and enabling fabric monitoring and SLA enforcements with awareness and policy enforcement for virtualized networks.
Virtualization everywhere with Cavium virtSOC™ technology – Full system virtualization for low latency from virtual machine to I/O.
Best in class performance per watt and performance per dollar for the target applications

"The unprecedented demand for power and cost efficient workload optimized computing driven from the data center and cloud is a disruptive opportunity for the industry. Our strategic investment in technologies and solutions that matter to the data center over the past 10+ years come together perfectly in ThunderX. We believe Cavium is well positioned to be a leading vendor for the most demanding cloud workloads of the future," said Syed Ali, President and CEO of Cavium Inc.

"The ARM ecosystem is radically expanding the realms of possibility for cloud and data center infrastructure," said Simon Segars, chief executive officer, ARM. "ThunderX is an innovative implementation of the ARMv8-A architecture. Together with ARM's Server Based System Architecture standard, it will accelerate the deployment of workload-optimized ARM-based systems and transform the pace of innovation in the data center."

ThunderX Workload Optimized Family of Processors

With ThunderX, Cavium will be delivering the most comprehensive family of integrated ARMv8 SOC products in the industry and for the first time data center and cloud operators will be able to truly optimize their deployments and workloads from the silicon all the way to the application.

ThunderX_CP™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated virtSOC, dual socket coherency, multiple 10/40 GbE and high memory bandwidth. This family is optimized for private and public cloud web servers, content delivery, web caching, search and social media workloads.
ThunderX_ST™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated virtSOC, multiple SATAv3 controllers, 10/40 GbE & PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency, and scalable fabric for east-west as well as north-south traffic connectivity. This family includes hardware accelerators for data protection/ integrity/security, user to user efficient data movement (RoCE) and compressed storage. This family is optimized for Hadoop, block & object storage, distributed file storage and hot/warm/cold storage type workloads.
Thunder_SC™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated virtSOC, 10/40 GbE connectivity, multiple PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency, and scalable fabric for east-west as well as north-south traffic connectivity. The hardware accelerators include Cavium's industry leading, 4^th generation NITROX and TurboDPI technology with acceleration for IPSec, SSL, Anti-virus, Anti-malware, firewall and DPI. This family is optimized for Secure Web front-end, security appliances and Cloud RAN type workloads.
Thunder_NT™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated virtSOC, 10/40/100 GbE connectivity, multiple PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency, and scalable fabric with feature rich capabilities for bandwidth provisioning , QoS, traffic Shaping and tunnel termination. The hardware accelerators include high packet throughput processing, network virtualization and data monitoring. This family is optimized for media servers, scale-out embedded applications and NFV type workloads.

"Cavium has leveraged its multiple generations of world class IP to engineer a highly integrated family of SOCs that we believe will set a new bar for performance, features, power and cost targeting next generation data center deployments. The ThunderX™ family of highly integrated SOCs is a finely tuned and balanced architecture designed from the ground up to deliver optimum application level performance," said Gopal Hegde, Vice President and General Manager of Cavium's Data Center Processor Group.

"With 48 cores, ThunderX far exceeds the per-socket performance of any ARM server processor yet announced. This achievement draws on Cavium's long experience with large multi-core processors," said Linley Gwennap, Principal Analyst at The Linley Group. "ThunderX will enable Cavium to be the first ARM-based vendor to deliver the performance and features required by today's volume server market at half the power and significantly lower cost compared to competing solutions. This announcement shows that the ARM camp is making progress in the server market, with Cavium leading the way."

ThunderX CN87xx Family

The CN87xx consists of 8 to16 cores in single socket configuration with two DDR3/4 controllers, multiple 10GbE, SATAv3 and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. This family is cost and power optimized for entry level applications such as cold storage, distributed content delivery, dedicated hosting, distributed memory caching and embedded and control plane.

ThunderX Comprehensive Software Ecosystem

Cavium is fully committed to industry standards, support for Open Source development and has a strategic and expanding core of blue chip software partners. ThunderX is enabled for efficient rack level deployment and application optimization from day one with fully developed firmware, Linux Kernel and Operating Systems, development tools, cloud infrastructure and scale out applications. Cavium's engagement in the software ecosystem includes membership in the UEFI Forum, open source and industry groups such as OpenStack Foundation, the Linux Foundation, the Xen Advisory Board and Linaro. Cavium plays an active role in upstream Linux Kernel development that ensures standard support for all ThunderX product families and product features and demonstrated support for Linux OS distributions. These include Ubuntu, Fedora^®, openSUSE and MontaVista, efficient and scalable virtualization support via KVM and Xen and full support for development environments including the GCC suite and Java. Many of these are available today for the ThunderX family.

In addition, Cavium is working directly with strategic commercial partners across the entire software ecosystem including application providers for Hadoop, Data Analytics, Web and Scale Out Storage.

Availability

The ThunderX family of processors along with a range of hardware reference platforms will be available for general sampling in early Q4'2014. Fedora and the Infinity design logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc

About Cavium, Inc.

Cavium is a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing in enterprise, data center, cloud and wired & wireless service provider applications. Cavium offers a broad portfolio of integrated, software compatible processors ranging in performance from 100 Mbps to over 100 Gbps that enable secure, intelligent functionality in enterprise, data-center, broadband/consumer and access & service provider equipment. Cavium's processors are supported by ecosystem partners that provide operating systems, tool support, reference designs and other services. Cavium's principal offices are in San Jose, California with design team locations in California, Massachusetts, India and China. For more information, please visit: http://www.cavium.com.

Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions and current expectations. Our actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include but are not limited to development of new products and technologies; quality and performance of our products; whether we are successful in marketing our products; the rate at which our new products are adopted; rate of new design wins; product developments by our competitors; technological advances; pricing pressures; general economic conditions; manufacturing difficulties; and other risks and uncertainties described more fully in our documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. More information about these and other risks that may impact Cavium's business are set forth in the "Risk Factors" section of our Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 2, 2014. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof and qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, and we assume no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements.

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SOURCE Cavium, Inc