ARM Announces N2 Neoverse Computing Cores for Data Centres
Recently, ARM announced details surrounding its next-generation processors aimed at the data centre and edge computing market. What challenges do data centres and edge devices face, what details have been released around the N2 architecture, and could RISC be the dominant CPU technology?
What challenges do data centres and edge devices face?
While the power and technology used in computing technology have undergone major changes, the development of large computers that take up entire rooms still exists today. Of course, modern computers are many orders of magnitude faster than the computers of the past. Still, the idea of using a dedicated facility to process large amounts of data has been around since the first computers.
Nvidia Developing Custom ARM-based ‘Grace’ Datacentre Processors
Recently, Nvidia announced that it is working on a custom ARM-based datacentre processor that will directly challenge Intel. What will the Grace processors provide, why do ARM processors make ideal candidates for next-generation datacentres, and does this fuel controversy around the Nvidia/ARM deal?
Nvidia to Create ‘Grace’ Datacentre Processors
Recently, Nvidia announced that it is in the process of designing custom datacentre processors utilising ARM cores. The code name for the processor, Grace, was chosen after the computer programmer Grace Hoper, and the processor range is expected to be ready in 2023.
While there is little detail surround the exact technical specifications of the new processors, it is known that the ARM technology used will be ARM Neoverse which are high-performance cores aimed at the server market. The Neoverse includes devices with core counts as high as 128, built using 7nm technolo
RISC-V (pronounced RISC-5) is the brainchild of UC Berkeley professors David Patterson and Krste Asanović. Patterson has a talent for catchy acronyms and architectures as a developer of RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) in the 1980s. They outlined the case for RISC-V in this paper.
What is an ISA?
An ISA as an interface similar to an Application Programming Interface (API) for CPU operations. A compiler or interpreter translates your high-level language, such as C, into ISA commands for the processor to perform work.
Each ISA instruction is implemented by the underlying hardware. So, ISA designs need to consider how their instructions will affect the price/performance of the CPU. That s why ARM, for example, requires most license holders to use their hardware designs as well.