Cavium Launches ThunderX Server Chip Family - Analyst Blog

Cavium, Inc. CAVM launched ThunderX yesterday - an entire family of ARM-based processors, with game changing applications in computing, storage and networking. This leading maker of semiconductor products is the first processor vendor, to have announced such capabilities with ARM, contending with Intel Corp's INTC Xeon processor family.

ThunderX Processors

The 2.5GHz 48 core ThunderX is being touted by Cavium as the world's highest performing low-power 64-bit ARMv8 SoC family of workload optimized processors. This product family is based on custom processor cores designed in the 28nm process technology, under an architectural license from ARM Holdings plc ARMH.

With best-in-class data center and cloud processors, Cavium is introducing four versions of the ThunderX chips for different markets – secure servers, networking, storage and traditional computing. The chip family proposes to deliver industry-leading ARMv7 SoC performance with unmatched levels of integration.

These processors intend to provide enough computing, memory and I/O on chip and between chips to meet the requirements of the scaled-out data center where the objective is to pool resources in order to achieve energy efficiency.

Cavium also announced plans for server contributions to the Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation, based on ThunderX processor family, so as to facilitate the community's mission of creating efficient designs for scalable computing.

Collaborations

A number of support service providers have announced collaborations with Cavium in support of its new family of processors. Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, proclaimed extended support to the ThunderX SoC family, continuing its strategic partnership with Cavium that delivered Ubuntu 13.10 support for ThunderX in 2013.

MontaVista Software, LLC, a leading provider of Carrier Grade Linux and Cloud Platform software solutions, declared the availability of the MV Cloud platform for the ThunderX SoC product family. American Megatrends, Inc. is collaborating with Cavium to deliver comprehensive firmware and platform management solutions in the scale out data center and cloud industry.

These partnerships will aid Cavium's differentiating technology and are crucial to the success of ThunderX in the server market.

Moving Forward

Cavium is hoping to leverage its ThunderX chip technology in order to challenge the networking empire of industry leader Intel, while competing with other players such as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD and Applied Micro Circuits Corp. AMCC.

With its proven technical expertise and core competence in its fundamental operations, Cavium is well poised to become a leading provider of the most challenging cloud workloads of the future.