Showing posts with label ARM Server SoC. Show all posts
The company's Cortex-R52 targets markets where safety is critical, including autonomous vehicles, robotics and health care.
ARM
is looking to establish itself in the burgeoning autonomous car market with a
new chip design that is aimed at addressing the high safety standards needed
for not only driverless vehicles but also other areas such as industrial and
medical robots.
Company
officials on Sept. 20 unveiled the Cortex-R52, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design
built on the company's ARMv8-R architecture that is designed to comply with a
range of safety standards—such as ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL 3—that
apply to situations in the growing internet of things (IoT), such as autonomous
cars and robots in health care settings, where safety and security is paramount
in the interaction between humans and machines.
The
includes with robots that assist doctors in surgery to self-driving cars that
need to understand the environment around them and immediately react to ensure
the safety of the drivers and the people around the cars. In addition, the
systems need to be highly secure to protect them against hackers.
"We
are helping partners to meet particular market opportunities, especially in
fully autonomous vehicles and robotics systems where specific functionality is
required for safety-critical tasks," James McNiven, general manager for
CPU and media processing groups at ARM, said in a statement.
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Like
other chip companies, ARM—which is being bought by Softbank for $32.2
billion—is working to branch out beyond its core markets to gain traction in a
broad range of emerging growth areas being fueled by the rapid proliferation of
connected devices, systems and sensors that make up the growing IoT. ARM
designs SoCs and licenses those designs to a wide variety of chip
manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Samsung and Applied Micro. Most smartphones
and tablets run on ARM-designed processors, but now company officials are
looking to extend the reach of the architecture into other areas, from the data
center to the IoT.
A
growing number of ARM chip partners—including Qualcomm and Broadcom—are rolling
out new products for the autonomous vehicle space. ARM also has been building
up its capabilities in the IoT, including with the acquisition last year of
Offspark, a company that specialized in security software for connected devices
and sensors.
In
a post on the company blog, James Scobie, a product manager at ARM, wrote about
the growing demand for safety and security in IoT systems.
"Across
multiple markets, electronic systems are becoming more complex—including
automotive, industrial control and healthcare," Scobie wrote.
"Vehicles are beginning to drive themselves, industrial robots are
becoming increasingly collaborative, and medical systems are automated to
assist with surgery or deliver medication. More of these systems are demanding
functionally safe operation and requiring that functional safety be provided at
a higher safety level than previous generations of systems demanded."
The
Cortex-R52 architecture was created to address those functional safety needs,
not only in self-driving cars, but also in increasingly automated factories
that include autonomous robots that use machine learning and vision systems to
enable them to work with less human control, he wrote.
"Outside
the factory, robotics will be used in environments too harsh for humans, such
as the nuclear industry, where there is a need to maintain precise and assured
operation," Scobie wrote. "They can also be used in the medical
operating theaters with remote surgery. In both areas, functionally safe
operation is critical."
A
key point in the Cortex-R52 is that there is what officials called
hardware-enforced separation of various software tasks to make sure the code
that is critical for safety is isolated. The hardware is managed by a software
hypervisor. Not only does this ensure the protection of the code, but also
lessens the amount of code that must be safety-certified, which makes software
integration, maintenance and validation easier and development faster, they
said.
"The
Cortex-R52's ability to compartmentalize software provides our users with the
best solution for safety without loss of determinism," Fabio Marchiò, vice
president of STMicroelectronics' Automotive and Discrete Group and general
manager of its Automotive Digital Division, said in a statement. "Its
virtualization support simplifies the consolidation of applications and
functions into a single processor, delivering a shorter integration time."
Support
for 32-bit ARM® processors available immediately, with PowerPC and MIPS added
to the Zulu Embedded roadmap
- Azul
is now the largest commercial vendor delivering multi-platform, 100% open
source OpenJDK builds targeting embedded and IoT markets
- Fully-supported
Zulu Embedded builds of OpenJDK for 32-bit ARM processors are now
available immediately
- Zulu
Embedded builds supporting 32-bit PowerPC processors will be delivered in
Q3 2016, plus 64-bit ARM v8 support in Q1 2017
- Supported operating systems include multiple Linux distros plus Windows 10 IoT
SUNNYVALE, Calif.-- Azul Systems
(Azul), the award-winning leader in Java runtime solutions, today announced
Zulu Embedded with expanded support for multiple 32 and 64-bit embedded
processors. Zulu Embedded, Azul's 100% open source Java Virtual Machine (JVM)
based on OpenJDK, now includes support for ARM, Intel, PowerPC and MIPS
processors. With today’s announcement, Azul is highlighting its full embedded
Java SE roadmap, which spans a variety of processor architectures and operating
systems, offers exceptional performance via optimized JIT compilation, supports
various form factors and compact profiles, and provides a pure open source,
standards-compliant solution for embedded Java.
General Availability: Zulu Embedded for
ARM® V7 and V8
Zulu Embedded brings a variety of
choices to product teams and manufacturers who integrate Java for their
embedded and IoT-centric designs. Java is used virtually everywhere in the
embedded world, ranging from manufacturing and logistics to security,
networking, wireless, mobile and many other embedded applications.
Fully-supported Zulu Embedded builds of
OpenJDK for 32-bit ARM are now available immediately, with builds supporting
32-bit PowerPC processors to be delivered in Q3 2016, plus 64-bit ARM v8
support in Q1 2017. Azul is also working with Cavium on Zulu Embedded support
for 64-bit versions of the MIPS processor architecture. Zulu Embedded has
supported both 32 and 64-bit x86 processors since its initial launch in early
2015.
“Highly efficient 32-bit ARM processors
power a diverse range of embedded applications in automotive, TV, gateways,
payment systems, and more," said Dominic Pajak, Marketing Director,
Embedded Segments, ARM. "OpenJDK-based products like Zulu Embedded greatly
enhance the Java development experience and add to the wide choices in the ARM
ecosystem.”
“Azul’s Java expertise is well
recognized in the industry, and the commitment to bring Zulu JVM to 64-bit
ARMv8 and MIPS architectures will accelerate the efficiency and optimization of
Java for Cavium customers,” said Larry Wikelius, Vice President Software
Ecosystem and Solutions, Cavium. “Java based applications continue to be
critical to our OCTEON® and ThunderX® installed base and Zulu will provide the
commercial options that many end users require. Azul is a welcome addition to
Cavium’s thriving software ecosystem partner community.”
“Java is a key enabling technology for
the Internet of Things,” said Christian Renaud, Research Director, Internet of
Things, 451 Research. “Many IoT applications demand real-time performance, and
Zulu Embedded’s new support of 32-bit ARM architecture enables a number of
opportunities and new applications in smart grid, healthcare, transportation,
and many other applications.”
“Canonical and Azul are working
together to ensure that Java developers building IoT solutions for Ubuntu Core
can easily package their applications as snaps and incorporate Zulu Embedded
using the new snapcraft tooling,” said Maarten Ectors, VP of IoT at Canonical.
"The Eclipse Foundation's Internet
of Things Working Group has a number of Java-based open source IoT projects
that will benefit from running on Zulu Embedded for 32-bit ARM processors. Zulu
Embedded will be an important open source option for Java developers building
IoT solutions," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of Eclipse
Foundation.
“Today’s announcement of the immediate
availability of Zulu Embedded with support for 32-bit ARM processors and our
extended embedded roadmap highlight Azul’s role as the industry’s leading
provider of multi-platform, open source Java solutions,” said Scott Sellers,
Azul Systems president and CEO. “The embedded and IoT markets are exploding
with new products and devices, and Zulu Embedded provides the industry’s only
open source, standards compliant solution for Java for these markets. By
offering a wide range of processor and operating system support, and delivering
customized builds to meet specific embedded requirements, Zulu Embedded is
quickly become the de facto standard for developing and commercializing
Java-based solutions in the embedded, maker and IoT markets.”
During our work with the Cavium ThunderX platform, we have had access to a single 48-core ARMv8 2.0GHz SKU. Cavium’s strategy is to target different processor models into different market. Aside from clock speed and core count, Cavium has feature-based differentiation for its different ThunderX product families. We received permission to publish information on the different SKUs and their unique features.
The four Cavium ThunderX families (ThunderX_CP, ThunderX_ST, ThunderX_SC, ThunderX_NT) have a similar base architecture. From this common architecture, each chip is tailored to its targeted application. There are a few common underpinnings but this is the basic block diagram that shows all potential components of the platform.
The ThunderX_CP family is targeted at compute workloads. These chips target public and private clouds, web caching and web serving, search, social media and similar applications. The main accelerator in this family is the vSwitch Offload Engine. If you think about the application workload this is targeted at, one will take advantage of the high speed networking, multitude of cores and RAM bandwidth.
With Cavium’s strong networking portfolio as well as 16x SATA III 6.0gbps ports (60% more than a comparable Intel single socket system), storage is an application where the ThunderX architecture is well suited. The ThunderX_ST family targets block, object and distributed file storage workloads, distributed database applications and Hadoop style workloads. It comes in 8-48 core variants and has additional hardware accelerators such as the compression engine available.
Building on the high core count and the high-end networking throughput, the Cavium ThunderX_SC is focused on applications like eCommerce web servers. Cavium includes hardware accelerators for SSL, IPSec, deep packet inspection, anti-virus and anti-malware to free CPU cycles. Cavium has IP that it uses in dedicated Nitrox III chips that it leverages here.
With Cavium’s background as a networking company, and given the specs of the ThunderX chips, one area we think the company will do well in is in the networking and SP cloud space. The ThunderX_NT targets network function virtualization (NFV) servers and the telecom clouds being deployed with a mix of high bandwidth along with hardware accelerators. Like the storage family, the networking focused family can scale from 8-48 cores.
Final Words
We have been working with a single socket Cavium ThunderX machine, the Gigabyte R120-T30 server thus far and the results have been impressive. Cavium is embracing a different approach to product differentiation than Intel. While Intel is generally focused on raw x86 performance, Cavium’s SoC design allows it to differentiate on features. This can include networking, storage accelerators and other vectors. The Cavium ThunderX family is the first ARMv8 chip we have seen, in production, that can legitimately match and outpace parts of the Intel Xeon E5 line in terms of performance.
