Ampere Computing hosted an AmpereOne architecture briefing this week where more details were shared on their long talked about AArch64 server processors. This announcement finally included a SKU table with suggested pricing as well as talking up a next-gen "AmpereOne Aurora" offering for a processor with up to 512 cores and some newly-disclosed Ampere AI acceleration IP.

It's been over two years of Ampere Computing talking about [1]AmpereOne without yet being able to actually being able to independently touch it / benchmark it, find it available as GA in any public cloud, or find it available to buy as an end-user in retail channels. But at the architecture briefing they assured everyone it's still ramping up and will continue to see better availability over the coming months. Much as they said back in May during their [2]Ampere Computing 2024 roadmap update . Hopefully in the coming weeks/months we'll finally have our hands on the much talked about AmpereOne processors for independent review/benchmarking while for now it's just relying their latest claims and plans for moving ahead.

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The Ampere Computing briefly quickly went to their reported performance-per-rack leadership based on SPECint rate against the AMD EPYC 9654 (Genoa) and EPYC 9754 (Bergamo) processor. They also included the Xeon Platinum 8592+ Emerald Rapids processor. Notably absent though was the recently launched Intel Xeon 6 " [4]Sierra Forest " processors. Their Emerald Rapids number was also just based on derating a SPEC submission with the oneAPI compiler but Ampere Computing was focused on GCC-based results. Unfortunate that there was no Sierra Forest comparison data included, but Ampere Computing was focused on AMD EPYC Genoa/Bergamo as the advertised competition.

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Some of their performance data is carried over from their May presentation as confirmed with the footnotes. I'm very eager still to put AmpereOne through the paces in my independent tests.

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Various server platforms from Supermicro, Gigabyte, ASRock Rack, and others should be available in the coming months as they ramp up. They said during the call that hyperscalers and some customers are already using AmpereOne. Meanwhile in the likes of Oracle Cloud there still is not the general availability of AmpereOne that has been talked about since Q4 of last year.

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As previously mentioned, next year they are aiming for an AmpereOne processor with up to 256 cores and will use a 3nm process compared to 5nm with the current AmpereOne processors. Ampere Computing is also hoping to have out its 12 channel DDR5 memory support for AmpereOne in Q4 of this year. This 12 channel AmpereOne CPU support is coming via a new "AmpereOne M" variant. Next year's AmpereOne 256-core CPUs will be the AmpereOne MX flavor. It's also interesting to see them reaffirm aging Ampere Altra processors as shipping through at least 2030. There's still a lot of innovative workstation/desktop motherboards and other uses for building a relatively low-cost Ampere Altra server. Going the route of Ampere Altra with a ATX/microATX board and the like is also one of the lowest cost ways if wanting an AArch64 developer box/workstation. Currently based on the SKUs and communication by Ampere Computing, it seems with AmpereOne the immediate focus is all around cloud / hyperscaler server needs and there aren't any low-core count AmpereOne SKUs at least not yet and thus for now Ampere Altra still has some interesting possibilities even with being a four year old platform.

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Ampere Computing today is announcing AmpereOne Aurora... The step past their 256 core AmpereOne (Ampere-1B) processor due out in 2025. With AmpereOne Aurora they are talking up to 512 AmpereOne cores and 3x the performance-per-rack of current AmpereOne processors. AmpereOne Aurora will also feature a scalable mesh for seamlessly connecting compute accelerators and also integrate Ampere AI IP into the SoC. Ampere AI IP is going to help with AI acceleration but beyond that they were light on the technical details for now beyond noting that it's just not some new ISA CPU extensions or the like. We'll see if it's like an NPU or what form it takes. No timetable was provided for when they expect to release AmpereOne Aurora, but given 256 cores in 2025, it probably won't be until 2026~2027 before seeing this 512 core monster. AmpereOne Aurora will also support HBM memory. Ampere is promoting that this 512-core CPU is capable of being air-cooled and thus the TDP shouldn't be too extremely high, we'll see.

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[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/AmpereOne

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/review/ampere-256-core-2025

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_1_lrg

[4] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Sierra+Forest

[5] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_2_lrg

[6] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_3_lrg

[7] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_4_lrg

[8] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_5_lrg

[9] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=ampereone-skus-pricing&image=ampereone_july_6_lrg