Ampere Teases Next-Gen Chip, Teams Up With Nokia at the Edge

Ampere Computing, the startup founded by former Intel president Renee James, will soon ship its second-generation, Arm-based cloud data center chip. Ampere Computing, the startup founded by former Intel president Renee James, will soon ship its second-generation, Arm-based cloud data center chip. These chips, designed for cloud and edge computing, use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC’s) 7nm technology and have 80 processing cores. By comparison, its first-generation chip is a 32-core processor. The new processor can also scale out to two sockets, which means a customer could have up to 160 cores in a two-socket platform. This core count beats top-of-the-line AMD and Intel x86 chips, said Ampere’s Senior VP of Product Jeff Wittich. “It’s a big jump up in core count — the highest core count out in the market — and we’re substantially increasing the overall performance,” Wittich said. “We will be getting samples out to our lead customers, some big hyperscalers we’ve been working with over the last couple of quarters who are anxiously awaiting our next-gen Ampere CPUs.” In addition to hyperscale customers using Ampere chips in their data centers, the startup is also partnering with Packet, Cloudflare, and other cloud and service providers on 5G and edge computing proof of concepts. This includes working with Nokia on its AirFrame telco edge server as well as Wiwynn’s OpenEdge platform, Wittich said. “If you want top-end performance in your hyperscale data center, we’ve got it,” he said. “And if you want power out at the edge with the exact CPU and performance at the edge, we’ve got that as well.” Wittich said he expects the new CPUs to be generally available by mid 2020. Ampere launched in late 2017 with acquired IP and assets from Macom, formerly AppliedMicro, one of the original Arm-based server vendors. Less than a year later it started shipping its first Arm-based processor. Original equipment manufacturers including Lenovo use this CPU in their servers. Two years in, the Santa Clara, California-based company has seven offices globally including four outside of the United States and about 600 employees. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand for real innovation in this space,” Wittich said. That’s why you’ve seen the cloud embrace accelerators, using smart NICs, using accelerators for the AI plane — there’s a big, unmet need because they aren’t getting what they need at the CPU level,” Wittich said. “We’re meeting a need that just hasn’t been met that by default is being filled by Intel.” While Intel’s CPU production delays continue to plague the data center market — and threaten the chipmaker’s data center dominance — Ampere embraces an agile design philosophy and promises to push out new chips without delays, Wittich added. “The same design philosophy that people have been embracing in software for a decade or more? We’re embracing that in hardware,” he said. “Our customers are cloud service providers who are really running their business like a software company. So we are going to iterate fast, and we will release products on a regular cadence that also allows for more customizability over time.”