Ampere AmpereOne Update 256 Core 12-Channel Arm CPU Coming

Today, Ampere’s annual video includes a few big updates, including a 256-core 3nm Arm server CPU with 12-channel DDR5 memory slated for 2025. It sounds like the Ampere AmpereOne generation is already in the planning phases and slated for 2026.

Ampere AmpereOne Update 256 Core 12-Channel Arm CPU Coming

First, let us discuss the roadmap. AmpereOne uses the company’s custom Arm cores and is set to scale to 192 cores. We have done a lot with the Ampere Altra (Max) over the years. That design uses Arm Neoverse cores and scales up to 128 cores per socket with DDR4. The AmpereOne generation that we have yet to test, but we have seen actually has two different platforms. One is the 8-channel DDR5 platform, as can be seen above. The second is the 12-channel DDR5 platform, which we have not been able to show yet but saw at Computex 2023 about a year ago. One of the AmpereOne platforms was actually the first we saw with a split motherboard where sockets were oriented one on top and one on bottom with cabled connectivity between the sockets. We were hoping to get to show you that design since it is really different.

Aside from the new SKUs, there are a few new features with AmpereOne. First is AmpereOne FlexSpeed, which gives deterministic clock speed increases without rebooting. The second is AmpereOne FlexSKU, which allows the core count and frequency of a chip to be adjusted in BIOS so one can deploy one higher core count SKU and then re-configure the server to have different numbers of active cores, clock frequencies, and TDP. We have seen Intel CPUs with Intel Speed Select Technology – Performance Profile (SST-PP) where one can do something similar.

Ampere says that AmpereOne will offer higher performance per watt than AMD EPYC “Bergamo”. Allegedly, both have been shipping since 2023. We will put the end notes at the end of this article, but something to keep in mind is that Ampere is using an estimated score for its part and also de-rating the AMD EPYC Bergamo performance normalizing it to GCC 13 performance. If the 733 SPECrate2017_int_base score looks lower than the 950+ we would normally expect from a Bergamo part in an official score, that is due to the compiler differences.

It would be interesting to see how close the parts would be on an efficiency basis if Ampere increased clock speed and voltage to get a similar score to Bergamo. Moving AmpereOne from 2.6GHz to 3.1GHz at 192 cores increased the CPU2017 integer rate by 78, but the power increased by 62W for just over 1.25 per W. At that rate, AmpereOne would still be ahead, but if the efficiency did not scale as well going up the V/F curve, then it might end up being really close.

Ampere also did rack-level comparisons with different applications.

Another big push for Ampere is the idea of doing CPU inference. Ampere is comparing to a NVIDIA A10 GPU which is not necessarily the best performing that NVIDIA has given it is a 2021 era GPU. Still, the idea is that CPU inference can be done on general purpose infrastructure instead of deploying dedicated accelerators.

Ampere also hopes to be the CPU core behind AI accelerators made by others as part of the AI Platform Alliance.

As part of its annual update and AI ambitions, Ampere is also highlighting a solution with Qualcomm AI 100 Ultra accelerators in a Supermicro server. We reviewed the NVIDIA version of the Supermicro and Ampere Altra Max platform with sixteen NVIDIA GPUs.

Ampere also has a Supermicro appliance with the NETINT Smart VPU Quadra T1U for video transcoding.

Here is the partner slide that is much bigger than when we saw Ampere Altra Q80-30 in Action at Ampere HQ back in 2020.

We wish that Rascom/ Noctua was on this slide since they are making high-core count Arm desktops viable Ampere Altra Noctua NH-D9 AMP-4926 4U and NH-U14S AMP-4926.

Final Words

My feedback to Ampere was simple. We have been hearing about AmpereOne for a long time. I have flown across the Pacific Ocean with one in the luggage bin above my seat and held one in my hand. I know they exist.

At the same time, it also feels like it is time to show off what the chips can do, as the Ampere Altra Max is starting to feel like an older product in the market, albeit one that actually can make sense for a number of use cases. Hopefully, we get to show AmpereOne soon.

End Notes to the Presentation

Since Ampere is presenting results of its competitors, and using a different methodology for things like SPEC CPU2017 than the benchmark’s official results, we are just going to post the end notes here.

There is more data about things like AmpereOne scaling and power consumption in these slides.

We thought folks might be interested in seeing them.

Again, hopefully we can get to our review soon.