Part II: Ampere Altra ARM Microprocessor Notes

Interesting tidbits about the Ampere Altra CPU, in no proper order.

Mt. Jade Platform: Dual Socket Rack Server. Image: Ampere Computing

This is my second installment with notes, factoids and reflections upon the ARM Ampere Altra 80-core CPU. As the previous article, this is not much of a story. I am not building up any particular narrative of punch line. It is just for whomever might be interested in various facts I observed. I hope to write a more comprehensive article on Ampere Altra later.

What is in particular of interest to me is to compare it to sever offerings from Intel, AMD. As well as compare it to stuff from other companies making ARM chips such as Apple and Amazon. It might also be interesting to compare with what the brand new Nuvia startup is building. Their ARM based Phoenix CPU is promising to revolutionize the server market.

As usual I am basing a lot of my note on reading through details provided by AnandTech.

Altra “Quicksilver” Design

Altra is really just the name of a series of chips. The current design is called Quicksilver and features 80 Neoverse-N1 cores. Remember from last time that Neoverse are cores specifically designed for servers. The design was the outcome of a years of cooperation between ARM and Ampere Computing.