Cavium introduces ThunderX2, the company's second-generation Arm v8-A SoC processors for next generation data center, cloud and high-performance applications. The ThunderX2 processor family is a single chip system on a chip (SoC) featuring:
- 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; and3X 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 and 32 MB distributed L3 cache
- •Advanced server class RAS features covering memory, CPU, cache, CCPI2 and PCIe interfaces
- Advanced power management with on-chip management engine for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling across the chip and full Turbo-mode support
- Single and dual socket configuration support using 2nd generation of Cavium Coherent Interconnect with > 2.5X coherent bandwidth compared to ThunderX
- System Memory provides eight 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, and 33% higher memory bandwidth and memory capacity compared to Xeon Skylake Platinum CPUs.
- Flexible IO: 56 lanes of PCIe Gen3 interfaces, x1, x4, x8 and x16 support, 14 integrated PCIe controllers, SATAv3, GPIOs, USB interfaces, and 6% 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. The 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. Additionally, it is supported by a comprehensive software ecosystem, ranging from platform level systems management and firmware to commercial Operating Systems, Development Environments and Applications. For more details, checkout the ThunderX2 datasheet.