In the middle of Sandy arrival, AMD revealed its plans to develop 64-bit ARM that would arrive by 2014. Rory Read, CEO of AMD revealed that the new chip will convert the data center computing environment as it’s focused on solid severs. He told to the press that AMD will make use of Sea Micro’s Freedom Fabric that it purchased recently to unite multiple processors. Read said that the fabric is only a concept and is a yet-to-be-produced supercomputer fabric in the market. He added that it’ll allow both x86 and ARM processors. Since it requires great efforts and deep study about the fabric and technologies to be used, the new desktop chips won’t arrive overnight, but in next couple of years.
Company Working on New ARM-based Servers
Lisa Su, GM of Global Business Units and Senior Vice President of AMD, announced the company’s plans to release ARM-based servers; he said that the work on new server, will not stop them from making x86-based server processors. The new server will combine graphic enabled processors cores for certain workloads. There won’t be any one option, fitting all, but each of them will be created for particular workloads. They are still working on the technology and hence many more details still look puzzled. For example, will AMD use standard or customized ARM cores? Still, it’s a great change in path, though the brand has been clueing at for a while talking about many deals with ARM, including heterogeneous system architecture.
Rivals like NVidia also Working on 64-Bit CPUs
AMD isn’t the only company to announce its plan on 64-Bit ARM-based CPU; two months ago, Applied Micro had announced its plans to create 64-Bit ARM-based processors, named X-Gene and few weeks ago, Calxeda announced the same and told it’ll be available in 2014. Other firms, like Nvidia, and Cavium are also extending their ARM-based servers, from 32-bit to 64-bit.
ARM named its 2 processor cores as A53 and A57; the smaller A53 is the smallest 64-bit processor, while the larger A57 is AMD’s powerful processor. Broadcom, Samsung, Calxeda, AMD, ST Microelectronics, and HiSilicon are in the talks for licensing the new cores that are slated to release in 2014. The company had introduced the latest version of its Piledriver-based FX processor code, known as Vishera a week ago. The FX series is designed to add discrete graphics to the desktop systems that are geared toward hobbyists and gamers. The revised cores and higher-end frequencies are aimed to deliver faster performance than older FX processors. Overall, it looks like more completion and a step forward, in terms of performance in the desktop market.