Cavium Debuts Project Thunder ARM Processors with up 48 Cores

Cavium introduced its line of "Project Thunder" 64-bit processors for next gen data centers, cloud and NFV applications.

The new processors will pack up to 80 custom ARMv8 cores along with configurable/virtualized network and storage I/O options, and a set of configurable HW accelerators for different applications.

Cavium will be offering four versions depending on the type of hardware accelerators on-board"  Compute ThunderX_CP, Networking ThunderX_NT, Storage ThunderX_ST and Security ThunderX_SC.  Sampling is expected in Q4 2014.

The new ARM-based devices will be implemented in 28nm technology.  Global Foundry is the fab.  Performance/Watt will be one of the key metrics that the ARM-devices will bring to the table. The company has commercially supported Linux OS partnerships lined-up with Canonical and MontaVista.  Cavium has also joined the Open Compute Foundation and said its ThunderX processors are well-suited for this architecture.

In the networking space, the ThunderX_NT processor is aimed at high-performance data plane applications, including NFV implementations, media servers and embedded applications. The devices will offer 10/40/100G I/O and full virtualization support.

Cavium said it is also continuing to advance its existing line of MIPS64 multicore processors, which also scale up to 48 cores and are implemented in 28nm silicon, although these are aimed at different Service Provider applications.

http://www.cavium.com