ARM Linux Server Performance Up More Than 7x Geo Mean In 8 Years, As Much As 15x With NVIDIA Vera CPU
([Processors] 2 Hours Ago
3 Comments)
- Reference: 0001638309
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-vera-arm-server
- Source link:
[1]
[2]NVIDIA's Vera CPU is delivering the fastest ARM performance I have ever seen. For putting it into perspective how far the ARM server CPU hardware has come in just the last decade and for some "fun" benchmarks as part of [3]Phoronix marking 22 years of Linux hardware reviews and benchmarking , here are some benchmarks showing the Ampere eMAG from September 2018 to the performance now with NVIDIA Vera. Not even factoring in the many software optimizations across the stack over the period, from simply the hardware side the ARM server CPU performance has advanced by more than 7x in eight years and in some workloads nearly 15x faster.
The [4]Ampere eMAG as what was Ampere Computing's first generation data center / server processor was quite interesting with its 32 Skylark cores. You can see my [5]2018 review of Ampere eMAG but it was the best ARM server platform of the time. Unlike other early ARM server options, Ampere eMAG "just worked" nicely out of the box with ARM Linux server distributions and delivered decent performance and showing much more potential than the days before that with the Calxeda ARM Linux servers, the spotty support among ARM single board computers, etc.
The Ampere eMAG featured 32 Skylark cores built on TSMC's 16nm process and a core design derived from AppliedMicro's X-Gene 3. The Ampere eMAG featured a 3.0GHz clock speed, 3.3GHz boost, eight channel DDR4-2400 memory support, 42 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and other decent specs for the time. The Ampere eMAG 32-core CPU TDP is 125 Watt.
Now with the new NVIDIA Vera CPU are 88 cores / 176 threads of their in-house "Olympus" core design, LPDDR5X-9600 memory, and around a peak TDP of 500 Watt for both the CPU and the LPDDR5X memory.
In being curious how far the ARM Linux sever hardware performance has evolved over the past eight years, I ran some fresh Ampere eMAG benchmark numbers to compare to my recent NVIDIA Vera testing. In being a few years since last powering on the Ampere eMAG OSPREY server, it still powered on and booted fine with modern Linux distributions! There were a few stability issues though either due to the aging hardware and/or software regressions, but for the most part it still pleasantly booted up and proceeded to install Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS just fine.
The Ampere eMAG was tested similarly to the NVIDIA Vera setup I recently conducted in an Ubuntu 24.04 base and using GCC 16.1 for the latest compiler support. The software setup was similar between this Ampere eMAG and NVIDIA Vera setups to just look at the ARM hardware performance. If wanting to take things further, one could also use a 2018 Linux software setup to show the significant hardware plus software ARM improvements over this period, but for the purposes of today's testing it was focused just on how far the ARM CPU/core performance has evolved.
Unfortunately there are no modern Ampere Arm numbers to toss into this mix with the previously-reviewed AmpereOne server having had to be sent back after review. And also not having seen any AmpereOne M/MX servers either.
It would have been interesting to compare the power efficiency too of ARM servers over the past eight years, but as noted NVIDIA has requested not yet conducting any Vera CPU power consumption measurements until their power management Linux kernel driver work is completed.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=nvidia-vera-arm-server&image=nvidia_vera_cpu_lrg
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-vera-benchmarks
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Phoronix-Turns-22
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Ampere+eMAG
[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ampere-emag-osprey
[2]NVIDIA's Vera CPU is delivering the fastest ARM performance I have ever seen. For putting it into perspective how far the ARM server CPU hardware has come in just the last decade and for some "fun" benchmarks as part of [3]Phoronix marking 22 years of Linux hardware reviews and benchmarking , here are some benchmarks showing the Ampere eMAG from September 2018 to the performance now with NVIDIA Vera. Not even factoring in the many software optimizations across the stack over the period, from simply the hardware side the ARM server CPU performance has advanced by more than 7x in eight years and in some workloads nearly 15x faster.
The [4]Ampere eMAG as what was Ampere Computing's first generation data center / server processor was quite interesting with its 32 Skylark cores. You can see my [5]2018 review of Ampere eMAG but it was the best ARM server platform of the time. Unlike other early ARM server options, Ampere eMAG "just worked" nicely out of the box with ARM Linux server distributions and delivered decent performance and showing much more potential than the days before that with the Calxeda ARM Linux servers, the spotty support among ARM single board computers, etc.
The Ampere eMAG featured 32 Skylark cores built on TSMC's 16nm process and a core design derived from AppliedMicro's X-Gene 3. The Ampere eMAG featured a 3.0GHz clock speed, 3.3GHz boost, eight channel DDR4-2400 memory support, 42 PCIe 3.0 lanes, and other decent specs for the time. The Ampere eMAG 32-core CPU TDP is 125 Watt.
Now with the new NVIDIA Vera CPU are 88 cores / 176 threads of their in-house "Olympus" core design, LPDDR5X-9600 memory, and around a peak TDP of 500 Watt for both the CPU and the LPDDR5X memory.
In being curious how far the ARM Linux sever hardware performance has evolved over the past eight years, I ran some fresh Ampere eMAG benchmark numbers to compare to my recent NVIDIA Vera testing. In being a few years since last powering on the Ampere eMAG OSPREY server, it still powered on and booted fine with modern Linux distributions! There were a few stability issues though either due to the aging hardware and/or software regressions, but for the most part it still pleasantly booted up and proceeded to install Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS just fine.
The Ampere eMAG was tested similarly to the NVIDIA Vera setup I recently conducted in an Ubuntu 24.04 base and using GCC 16.1 for the latest compiler support. The software setup was similar between this Ampere eMAG and NVIDIA Vera setups to just look at the ARM hardware performance. If wanting to take things further, one could also use a 2018 Linux software setup to show the significant hardware plus software ARM improvements over this period, but for the purposes of today's testing it was focused just on how far the ARM CPU/core performance has evolved.
Unfortunately there are no modern Ampere Arm numbers to toss into this mix with the previously-reviewed AmpereOne server having had to be sent back after review. And also not having seen any AmpereOne M/MX servers either.
It would have been interesting to compare the power efficiency too of ARM servers over the past eight years, but as noted NVIDIA has requested not yet conducting any Vera CPU power consumption measurements until their power management Linux kernel driver work is completed.
[1] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=nvidia-vera-arm-server&image=nvidia_vera_cpu_lrg
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/review/nvidia-vera-benchmarks
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Phoronix-Turns-22
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Ampere+eMAG
[5] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ampere-emag-osprey