Dubbed the X-Gene server on a chip, the product has been touted by Applied as the first 64-bit-capable ARM-based server in existence, the ideal part for webscale users (check out the pic of Facebook’s Frank Frankovsky holding one up) and also the future of Applied Micro. It’s the first chip to contain a software-defined network (SDN) controller on the die that will offer network services such as load balancing and ensuring service-level agreements on the chip. It’s like shoving the networking and computing vision of the Cisco Unified Computing System on a chip.

This is a big deal. Although the first generation won’t have enough bandwidth to eliminate the need for a switch at the top of a rack, the following generation will.

Paramesh Gopi, president and CEO of Applied Micro, said that these new chips have now made it past the prototype stage (the board in the picture uses an FPGA instead of a production silicon) AND are now in the hands of several customers, including Dell and Red Hat. Gopi expects physical servers containing the X-Gene to hit the market by the end of this year.

Gopi’s big bet

The chip is manufactured at 40 nanometers and contains eight 2.4 GHz ARM cores that Applied has designed, four smaller ARM Cortex A5 cores running the SDN controller software (the pink bit on the block diagram below), four 10-gigabit ethernet ports, and various ports that can support more Ethernet, SSDs, accelerator cards such as those from Fusion-io or SATA drives. In short, this a chip that combines networking and computing in one package.

When about asked about the power consumption of the chip, Gopi said it will run at 50 percent of the total cost of ownership of a comparable x86 product, but wouldn’t discuss actual power consumption.

“We’ll be able to run your LAMP stack and SQL jobs on Xeon-class ARM cores, and the routing protocols and such will be running on the Atom-class ARMs,” Gopi said. “It’s the fundamentals of a rack on a single chip.”

Building this chip has taken four years. It required Gopi to visit ARM at its U.K. headquarters to convince them to give him an architecture license to build a chip for servers. In an interview with me at the Open Compute Summit in January, Gopi explained that he saw the flexibility and the architecture that ARM offered could become an asset for webscale computing, so he embarked on turning Applied Micro, a public company with a few hundred million in revenue, into a startup.

Like others, such as Barry Evans of Calxeda or Andrew Feldman of Sea Micro, he saw that power issues were raising the cost of operating data centers — and cutting into the bottom line at web businesses — and he thought he had a solution. His solution was to get an architectural license from ARM, so he could make a 64-bit-capable chip ahead of ARM’s plans to introduce that powerful a core. ARM introduced that core last year, and vendors of ARM-based server chips such as AMD and Calxeda expect to have 64-bit-capable chips next year. But Applied is shipping those machines today.

“We’ll end this wimpy core vs. brawny core debate once and for all,” Gopi said.

The new hardware mindset

Applied Micro CEO Paramesh Gopi.

The mobile industry has relied upon the common ARM architecture to build a wide variety of chips that give each vendor a slightly different set of features. Both Nvidia and Qualcomm start with ARM cores (hell, even Apple has an ARM architectural license) to build their application processors. This lowers the cost of designing chips, because engineers can start from a higher level when solving problems.

And the modularity of the ARM cores combined with an architecture license also means firms can customize their designs for a certain market without spending a huge amount of time or dollars. Gopi will actually address some of this at our Structure event June 19 and 20, in a presentation on designing hardware at the speed of software.

For Applied, this dynamic plays out in the existence of a new type of chip for the data center, but also in the fact that in nine or 12 months Applied plans to test the second-generation X-Gene chip, one that will support 100-Gigabit Ethernet and will obviate the need for a top-of-rack switch. Ironically, this architecture probably won’t be a welcome development for Applied’s existing networking clients like Cisco and Juniper.

But it’s clearly the direction that large webscale customers want to go. And the second-generation architecture is also important for the first-generation X-Gene products, because without it, Applied may not have a chance at getting technically savvy and forward-looking potential customers that need not just a single interesting product, but a real understanding of the roadmap before they commit to a new architecture.

So even as Applied ships these first products to customers for use in devices that hit the market at the end of this year, it’s already developing its production of the next generation 28-nanometer versions of the heavy-duty ARM cores and 100-Gigabit-capable networking while prepping for later versions that may include photonics and other elements that data center customers are already discussing as tomorrow’s technology.

It took a bold vision — and that trip to ARM — for Gopi to get Applied Micro to the table as these discussions about the next generation data center are playing out. But with this design, it has earned a seat. Now all it has to do is earn the business.

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ARM, which licenses its IP to a variety of chip makers, had stated its intentions to enter the data center market back in 2010, as worries about energy efficiency increased and the needs of webscale computing customers changed. While less powerful than their Intel counterparts, a cluster of lower-power ARM chips is more power efficient on a performance per watt basis and some workloads don’t even need the performance characteristics of a big Intel core.

The combination of these two trends has led to a plethora of vendors from big names like Marvell and AMD to startups such as Calxeda to license ARM’s cores with an eye toward making servers. Holding ARM back so far has been the delay in building out 64-bit capable cores (they are expected later this year) as well as a lack of enterprise software running on the ARM platform.

But given the economics of these so-called wimpy cores and the limits of using ARM cores in the enterprise server market today, the use of ARM-based servers in the storage arena is not surprising. Storage usage scenarios are perfect in many ways because they don’t need a lot of raw performance, nor do they require 64-bit capable cores.

Thus, Baidu using ARM for storage makes sense. It’s also an area where Calxeda expects to see its first production deployments sometime this year, according to a conversation I had with Karl Freund, the VP of marketing of Calxeda last December. As for the Baidu deployment, it’s using the quad-core Armada CPU, Marvell’s storage controller, and a 10Gb Ethernet switch all integrated on a single system on a chip.

Marvell’s release says the chip firm customized the ARM servers specifically for Baidu’s cloud storage requirements, taking the concept of server customization common in webscale deployments to the chip level. Marvell says the platform is designed to increase the amount of storage for conventional 2U chassis up to 96 TB, and to lower the total cost of ownership by 25 percent, compared with previous x86-based server solutions. The end result should cut Baidu’s power in its data center by half according to the release.

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Karl Freund, the VP of marketing for Calxeda, says the company has shipped about 3,000 nodes and 130 systems although none are deployed in production environments yet. He expects the first production deployments to occur at the end of the second quarter of 2013. But most of the conversation was about how ARM-based systems could be used today in the storage market. Not just for cold storage such as Amazon’s Glacier or Facebook’s photo storage effort, but even for the big storage systems for scale out storage and enterprise class storage appliances. Named customers who are evaluating the systems include Scale.io, Gluster and Inktank, the storage startup backed by Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame that is commercializing Ceph.

There are more, notes Freund, (pictured) who says that when Calxeda servers make it into production environments, they will likely be deployed first in a storage capacity, as storage customers don’t care if the chips are 64-bit compatible. For now, ARM-based systems are stuck only able to address less memory because ARM only has a 32-bit capable core design. Next year ARM will have a 64-bit capable design and systems will be built around them in 2014 (maybe even late 2013). Calxeda plans its 64-bit capable SoC for 2014.

But Calxeda isn’t waiting and in storage, it’s also not focusing on power consumption — the initial draw for ARM-based servers in the scale out data center. For the storage world, where spinning hard drives tends to suck huge quantities of electricity, adding a low-power has a negligable affect on the consumption of an overall system. However, Calxeda boasts that popping in more of its systems on a chip (SoC) are both cheaper and make for faster information transfer and retrieval.

Its tests show roughly a 4X improvement in IOPs for a rack of Calxeda SoCs versus x86-based systems. Adding Calexeda’s SoCs also cuts complexity because the entire system of processing and networking components are integrated on the SoC, and the terabit-plus fabric between cores also offers more network capacity between cores in a system –the so-called east-west networking traffic.

As the market for scale out computing, storage and networking changes the demands made on IT equipment, Calxeda and others are seeing an opportunity that may have begun in servers and the cloud computing environment, but certainly isn’t stopping there. No wonder Intel is trying to catch up with chips of its own. So far, it’s recently announced new Atom-based chips haven’t made the cut for most customers I’ve spoken with (the lack of integration of the entworking and processing hardware is a problem), but in 2014 it will have a new, integrated SoC as well. Then, the competition will really get interesting.

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This means that not only is TI confident that there’s a market for a new type of high performance computing chip (as well as one for webscale and cloud providers), but that TI thinks that integrating up to five 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports on that chip will make it more ideal for the new demands on data centers. As Tom Flanagan, the director of multicore strategy at TI said, the integration of 10-Gigabit Ethernet on the system on a chip means that the top-of-rack switch could be rendered moot.

Others are also thinking about the future of the top-of-rack chip, especially in scale-out data centers where traffic doesn’t stay confined to a rack but needs to communicate with servers in racks across mammoth data centers. For example, Frank Frankovsky of Facebook has said he’s trying to think outside that architecture. Facebook has also stepped up to support the developing ARM-based server ecosystem, appearing onstage as AMD said it would license the ARM core for server chips and joining an industry group aimed at building software for ARM servers.

The KeyStone purpose-built server architecture.

The integration of networking onto a single die (or chip) is an architecture that Intel talked up at its developer conference in September, but it plans to integrate 100 gigabit networking on the chip and it plans to do this by some unspecified future time. Texas Instruments says it is sampling its KeyStone architecture-based chips and they will be ready for servers by next year. Unlike some of the recent announcements from ARM partners in the server arena, TI plans to use the existing 32-bit ARM A15 processor cores married to its math-oriented digital signal processing chips, as opposed to the next generation A-50 cores that support 64-bit computing, but won’t be ready for servers until late in 2013 or early 2014.

Servers aren’t the only area where TI is trying out the ARM+DSP combo. It plans to use them for sensor-based chips as well as in normal networking equipment — both industries where TI has a long history. I have no idea if Texas Instruments can make DSP chips inside servers happen (the company has been talking this up since 2009) but the marriage of DSP and ARM, as well as integrated networking seems to offer a powerful product for real-time data analysis where you want to move and process a lot of information in parallel quickly.

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AMD will license the ARM chip technology as part of a strategy that will bring cell phone chips into its servers. The company on Monday announced that it will design 64-bit ARM technology-based processors in addition to its x86 processors for multiple markets — hoping to cater to the needs of data center and cloud-centric companies looking for low power computing.

The move has been debated within AMD for some time, and represents AMD’s embrace of a heterogeneous computing strategy. The news also shows how AMD is distancing itself from its fellow x86 rival, Intel, and in reality, could prove to be AMD’s best chance to continue on as player in the chip market.

At a press conference on Monday AMD CEO Rory Read said, “Modern cloud is the killer app and it is bringing about the fastest growth across the industry.” He is convinced that ARM and AMD “can change the server and data center landscape.”

In a press statement to accompany the news conference, Reed added:

ARM, through its various partnerships, has been slowly gnawing at Intel’s dominance of the chip business, thanks in part to the booming demand for smartphones and other such devices. ARM has been lusting to take a piece of the server business, giving Intel more headaches. AMD, is a perfect partner for such an assault. The chips are likely to be made available in 2014, according to AMD executives.

We’ve been anticipating this move for some time, ever since AMD purchased SeaMicro, a startup that builds ultra-dense low-power servers for cloud computing that use Intel’s low-power Atom chips. SeaMicro uses x86-based chips for its boxes, but it has a technology that enables it to use any type of processor, including ARM-based cores.

The transition to alternative forms of computing in the data center has come about in some market segments, because certain jobs need less computing horsepower to complete their tasks and data center operators are looking for the most energy-efficient processor for the job. Just like you might not take your 12-cylinder Lamborghini to the grocery store to pick up a gallon of milk, the data center guys are increasingly seeing high-end general purpose CPUs as appropriate for some tasks, but overkill for others.

ARM has seen the opportunity for so-called wimpy cores, and has invested in Calxeda, a systems maker that is building a new type of servers using ARM-based SoCs. Dell, HP and others are also getting in on the ARM-server market with new products using chips from Calxeda, Marvell, Applied Micro, and perhaps even Cavium. Now that AMD has jumped on the bandwagon and with ARM servers in production later this year, getting ARM into the data center is looking more and more likely. Your move Intel.

Additional reporting by Om Malik.

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Last week, Calxeda kicked it off with news of its product roadmap, and Dell followed with its own announcement of an ARM-based server designed for Hadoop. HP, Dell, Penguin Computing, Boston Ltd., Cavium and Marvell also are all officially on the ARM server train. On Monday, AMD is expected to announce that it’s taking an ARM license.

There will be ARM-based chips in production environments by the end of this year, but those will only be 32-bit and capable of addressing smaller amounts of memory. Still, Dell, Calxeda and others argue that 32-bit processing is good enough for Hadoop and a few other specific data center workloads.

However, to really break ground in the server world, you need a chip capable of 64-bit processing that is widespread across the enterprise market. Which is why it’s significant that on Thursday, ARM, Red Hat and Applied Micro Circuits Corp. said they were getting together to develop a 64-bit server design platform. Applied Micro, a server maker, is announcing the Applied Micro X-Gene Server on a Chip aimed at the big data and cloud server market.

Red Hat will be responsible for building support within the Fedora community for the new 64-bit ARMv8 architecture, in hopes of making this dream a reality in time for the actual launch of 64-bit capable ARM cores next year. The company’s support is important, as has been Canonical’s previous support, because you need software capable of running on ARM-based chips. It would be nice if VMware were to step up and say that it wanted to support ARM in the data center, but so far that hasn’t happened.

In the coming week I expect to see more news highlighting the much-needed development of the ARM-server ecosystem. Stay tuned to see more ways the chips from your cell phones will invade data center.

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