Qualcomm Centriq 2400 (and Windows Server on ARM)

[lopri]

This seems like a big news. I thought Windows on ARM will arrive with S835, but this may actually be the first. (since the WinRT, of course)

Qualcomm Collaborates with Microsoft to Accelerate Cloud Services on 10nm Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Platform

At Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit 2017, Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM), through its subsidiary, Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies, Inc. (QDT), today announced a collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate next generation cloud services on its 10 nanometer Qualcomm Centriq™ 2400 platform. This collaboration will span multiple future generations of hardware, software and systems.

With the goal of enabling a variety of cloud workloads to run on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform powered by Qualcomm Centriq 2400 server solutions, QDT today submitted a server specification using its advanced 10 nanometer Qualcomm Centriq 2400 platform to OCP. The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard server specification is based on the latest version of Microsoft’s Project Olympus. Moreover, QDT today conducted the first public demonstration of Windows Server, developed for Microsoft’s internal use, powered by the Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor.

QDT has been working with Microsoft for several years on ARM-based server enablement and has onsite engineering at Microsoft to collaboratively optimize a version of Windows Server, for Microsoft’s internal use in its data centers, on Qualcomm Centriq 2400-based systems. QDT’s OCP submission is the result of a multi-faceted, multi-level engagement between the two companies to facilitate ARM adoption into the data center. It encompasses multiple areas of hardware and software including board development, firmware, operating system, compilers and tools, and CoreCLR.

The Qualcomm Centriq 2400 Open Compute Motherboard pairs QDT’s recently announced 10nm, 48-core server processor with the most advanced interfaces for memory, network, and peripherals enabling the OCP community to access and design ARM-based servers for the most common cloud compute workloads. It fits into a standard 1U server system, offering system vendors the flexibility to create innovative, configurable designs for compute-intensive data center workloads. It can be paired with compute accelerators, multi-host NICs, and leading-edge storage technologies such as NVMe to optimize performance for specific workloads.

AT reported when Qualcomm demo'd the Centriq 2400.

Qualcomm Demos 48-Core Centriq 2400 Server SoC in Action, Begins Sampling

Other than that it is an ARMv8 SOC with 48 cores (w/o SMT) fabbed on 14nm LPP, not much is known about the Centriq 2400. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up to the other flagship SOCs of 2017. But for now a bigger news seems to be the debut of Windows Server on ARMv8.

 

[Nothingness]

Microsoft seems to be serious about ARM this time:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/enabling-cloud-workloads-through-innovations-in-silicon/

We have been working closely with multiple ARM suppliers, including Qualcomm and Cavium, on optimizing their hardware for our datacenter needs. One of the biggest hurdles to enable ARM servers is the software. Rather than trying to port every one of our many software components, we looked at where ARM servers are applicable and where they provide value to us. We found that they provide the most value for our cloud services, specifically our internal cloud applications such as search and indexing, storage, databases, big data and machine learning. These workloads all benefit from high-throughput computing.

To enable these cloud services, we’ve ported a version of Windows Server, for our internal use only, to run on ARM architecture. We have ported language runtime systems and middleware components, and we have ported and evaluated applications, often running these workloads side-by-side with production workloads.

During the OCP US Summit, Qualcomm, Cavium, and Microsoft will be demonstrating the version of Windows Server ported for our internal use running on ARM-based servers.

So they'll eat their own food