AmpereOne Aurora In Development With Up To 512 Cores, AmpereOne Prices Published
Ampere Computing also provided an architecture deep dive around their custom cores. But ultimately from my perspective I'm more focused on the end-user performance and the like over spending too much time on all the fine technical core details you can read about elsewhere. They also talked more about their previously-confirmed Memory Tagging Extensions with AmpereOne and other new features like adaptive traffic management and memory and cache QoS enforcement.
AmpereOne will also support custom integration of customer IP blocks as another new disclosure.
Ampere Computing claims 50% higher performance per Watt over AMD EPYC Genoa. Genoa and Bergamo are already approaching two years of availability and given AmpereOne still ramping, it will be interesting to see how AmpereOne competes with upcoming AMD EPYC Turin. Additionally, how AmpereOne compares to Intel Sierra Forest (and upcoming Granite Rapids) once we finally have AmpereOne in the lab.
And what we have long been waiting for... An AmpereOne SKU table! And suggested pricing! At the top of the stack is the AmpereOne A192-32X that is 192 cores with a 3.2GHz frequency and 274 Watt usage power. The suggested pricing is at $5,555 USD. These specs are great and the pricing is very competitive, if/when the hardware is available for interested customers to buy. Assuming the performance claims hold up, 192 AArch64 cores at 3.2GHz should be very nice for cloud workloads and other cases all while consuming less than 300 Watts. As a quick reference, the AMD EPYC 9754 is listed on some Internet retails for $7~8k USD. So even if the performance isn't superior to Bergamo across the board, there's still likely a nice value play if the server/platform pricing is competitive and there is broad availability of AmpereOne servers this year. EPYC 9754 also supports 12 channel DDR5 memory while it will be interesting to see the SKU table and pricing for the upcoming AmpereOne M processors with similar 12 channel memory support.
Previously Ampere Computing said AmpereOne was for 128 cores and higher, so seeing the AmpereOne A96-37X on the SKU table came as a surprise. The AmpereOne A96-37C has 96 cores with a 3.7GHz clock frequency and 293 Watt rated power use for $4761. The suggested pricing is fairly flat with $4,761 at the low-end to $5,555 at the top end. For those hoping AmpereOne would introduce some 64 core or lower parts in potentially catering to workstations or the like, there isn't currently any and thus left to Ampere Altra. It's nice seeing the workstation ecosystem around Ampere Altra but eventually with time the PCIe 4.0 and DDR4 and older Arm cores will become less attractive.
It's great finally seeing the AmpereOne SKU table/pricing and hopefully next up will be finally seeing AmpereOne hardware in the wild.
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