Transforming compute for next-generation infrastructure

Arm is sharing new features of its latest infrastructure platforms, Neoverse V1 and Neoverse N2, as well as a growing list of Arm partners bringing the performance, performance per watt and TCO benefits of Neoverse to infrastructure markets.

News Highlights:

The Arm Neoverse V1 platform is first in a new computing tier for Arm, and the first-ever Arm designed core to support Scalable Vector Extension (SVE), delivering 50% more performance for demanding HPC and ML workloads
The Arm Neoverse N2 platform is the first based on Armv9, delivering 40% more performance for diverse workloads
Arm Neoverse CMN-700 is the industry’s most advanced mesh interconnect to unleash the performance and performance/watt benefits of Neoverse V1 and N2 platforms

The demands of data center workloads and internet traffic are growing exponentially, and new solutions are needed to keep up with these demands while reducing the current and anticipated growth of power consumption. But the variety of workloads and applications being run today means the traditional one-size-fits all approach to computing is not the answer. The industry demands flexibility; design freedom to achieve the right level of compute for the right application.

As Moore’s Law comes to an end, solution providers are seeking specialized processing. Enabling specialized processing has been a focal point since the inception of our Neoverse line of platforms, and we expect these latest additions to accelerate this trend.

Back in September when we introduced these new Neoverse N2 and Neoverse V1 platforms to our roadmap, it was a testament to the groundswell of Neoverse interest and adoption across our growing ecosystem. Today we’re pleased to share some of the new features of these platforms, and the growing list of Arm partners bringing the superior performance, performance per watt and TCO benefits of Neoverse to infrastructure markets.

Marvell revealed its OCTEON family of networking solutions based on Neoverse N2 will begin sampling by end of 2021, providing a 3x performance uplift over previous generation OCTEON solutions
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has announced it will join SiPearl and ETRI in licensing Neoverse V1 for its national exascale HPC project
Oracle plans to adopt Ampere Altra CPUs for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, as the price/performance leader across a wide range of workloads
Arm-powered AWS Graviton2 continues to rapidly expand its EC2 footprint with steady growth and regional expansion
Alibaba Cloud just tested the upcoming Alibaba Cloud ECS Arm instances, showing off impressive results on the SPECjbb benchmark and showing improved performance of the DragonWell JDK on Arm by 50%
Tencent is making investments in both hardware testing and on software enablement that will allow them to adopt Neoverse technology for cloud applications

These partners are taking full advantage of what is under the hood of Neoverse platforms. This is just the tip of the iceberg for both infrastructure workload benefits and on how our partners plan to implement and take Neoverse IP to market.

Blazing a trail for the new era of computing
As we look to the next era of computing, we want to change how the industry thinks about deploying infrastructure. Innovators shouldn’t have to choose between performance or power efficiency, and Neoverse helps deliver a solution that brings the best of both worlds to enable a range of cloud-to-edge use cases.

Neoverse V1 and Neoverse N2 platforms are intended to lead the way to this next era. Let’s dig into what partners can expect from each.

Neoverse V1: A revolution in high-performance computing
Delivering a massive 50%¹ uplift, 1.8x improvement for a range of vector workloads and 4x improvement for machine learning workloads over N1, Neoverse V1 is the first in a new performance-first computing tier for Arm. Neoverse V1 gives our silicon partners the flexibility to build compute for applications more reliant on CPU performance and bandwidth while providing SoC design flexibility.

With the performance-first mindset, the design philosophy behind Neoverse V1 was to build the widest-microarchitecture Arm has ever produced to accommodate more instructions in flight in support of markets like high performance and exascale computing. The wide and deep architecture with the addition of scalable vector extensions (SVE), gives Neoverse V1 the lead in per-core performance, code longevity with SVE, and provides SoC designers implementation flexibility. You can see the benefits of some of these design elements in SiPearl and ETRI’s HPC SoCs and we think this is the direction HPC compute is heading.

For more details on the technical features of the Neoverse V1 platform, read our blog here.

Neoverse N2: Market leading cloud-to-edge performance
A few weeks ago, Arm introduced the Armv9 architecture to address global demand for ubiquitous specialized processing. The Neoverse N2 platform is paving the way for infrastructure cores and is the first based on the Armv9 architecture with improvements to security, power efficiency and performance.

Delivering 40%¹ higher single-threaded performance compared to N1, Neoverse N2 still retains the same level of power and area efficiency as Neoverse N1. The scalability of Neoverse N2 extends from high-throughput computing, such as in hyperscale cloud where we see 1.3x improvement on NGINX over N1 and down to power and space constrained edge and 5G use-cases which deliver 1.2x faster DPDK packet processing over N1.

The Neoverse N2 platform delivers superior performance per-thread, and industry-leading performance-per-watt driving a reduced TCO for users. Neoverse N2 is the first platform to feature SVE2, an Armv9 feature that drives a significant uplift in cloud-to-edge performance efficiency. For a broader set of use cases like machine learning, digital signal processing, multimedia and 5G systems, SVE2 not only brings performance but also the ease of programming and portability benefit of SVE.

For more details on the technical features of the Neoverse N2 platform, read our blog here.

Building heterogenous SoCs
We are eager to see how our partners will take advantage of the performance and scalability capabilities of these two new platforms, but we couldn’t call them “platforms” without Arm system IP. Today we are also unveiling CMN-700, a key element for constructing high-performance Neoverse V1 and Neoverse N2-based SoCs.

Building on the success of CMN-600, CMN-700 provides a step function increase in performance on every vector, from core counts and cache sizes to the number and types of memory and IO devices you can attach.

CMN-700 enables next-generation use cases for multi-chip, memory expansions and accelerators. Through our continued investment in CCIX and CXL, we’re providing more customization options and enabling partner solutions with fast fabric and high core count scalability. This will open doors to expand beyond traditional silicon limits and allow for more flexibility for tightly coupled heterogeneous compute.

You can read more about the new CMN-700 features and capabilities in each of the Neoverse V1 and Neoverse N2 technical blogs.

Liberty to innovate
There is a new wave of innovation coming from across the Arm ecosystem, and the two new products we’ve delivered today strengthen our commitment to the Arm Neoverse roadmap. By achieving higher than promised generational performance gains and elevating the design flexibility in our platforms, we are enabling partners with the freedom to build, design, and create solutions that will enable the next-generation infrastructure.