X86 to ARM CPU Transition to Accelerate
The author is an analyst of NH Investment & Securities. He can be reached at hwdoh@nhqv.com. -- Ed.
ARM has unveiled its Neoverse V1 server CPU core, upgrading the previous version (which already surpassed Intel and AMD’s X86 processors in performance). The new high-performance version of the N1 core should accelerate the ongoing trend to replace X86 with ARM’s CPU.
ARM releases upgraded high-end server CPU core
ARM unveiled two new server CPU cores, the Neoverse N2 and V1. The N series is aiming for high performance with moderate die size, while the V series CPU is optimized for the high-performance computing market thanks to a higher single-thread and vector performance. The N2 will likely make its way into a very broad range of chips from infrastructure edge (eg, 5G base stations) to server CPUs (eg, next-generation Amazon AWS CPU).
V1 has improved IPC by 1.5x compared to the N series, and it supports ARMv8.4 instructions. The bandwidth between the branch prediction unit and the instruction cache has doubled to 2x32B, and the nano branch target buffer has increased to 96. Branch prediction errors are to be reduced by up to 90%, and front-end delays should decrease by up to 50%. The V1 also offers a wider, 5-wide decode from the traditional pipeline path while allowing up to 8 MOPs/cycle from the new MOP cache.
X86 to ARM CPU transition trend to accelerate
The backend for the V1 is also being extended. To support scalable vector extension, the vector/FP execution unit has been doubled, and there are now two 256b SVE Vector devices. In order to increase the performance of machine learning operations, it supports a new matrix multiplication extension that supports INT8 2X2 operations and bfloat16. The 16-bit and 8-bit matrix multiplication computing performance of the V1 is 4x that of the N1.
The N2 is the successor to the N1 adopted in Amazon’s Graviton 2, which has already been well-received by the industry for showing higher performance than Intel and AMD processors with similar specifications. With the advent of the V1 core (which offers better performance than the N series), the trend to replace Intel and AMD’s X86 server CPUs with ARM CPUs will likely accelerate. This direction bodes well for related players such as Nvidia (which has acquired ARM), TSMC (the number-one foundry player), Synopsys (EDA tools), and ASML (EUV equipment).