64 core processor from Chinese chip maker Phytium

While the world awaits the AMD K12 and Qualcomm Hydra ARM server chips to join the ranks of the Applied Micro X-Gene and Cavium ThunderX processors already in the market, it could be upstart Chinese chip maker Phytium Technology that gets a brawny chip into the field first and also gets traction among actual datacenter server customers, not just tire kickers.

Phytium Technology has announced a 64-core ARM server CPU, which according to the press release will deliver 512 gigaflops of performance. The new chip, known as FT-2000/64, is aimed at “high throughput and high performance servers.”

Phytium is a chip design enterprise, based in Tianjin, China. In March 2015, the company released its first products: the FT-1500A/4 and FT-1500A/16, 4-core and 16-core implementations, respectively of the ARMv8 design.

Phytium was on hand at last week’s Hot Chips 28 conference, showing off its chippery and laptop, desktop and server machines employing its “Earth” and “Mars” FT series of ARM chips. Most of the interest that people showed in the server variants, which are both based on variants of the “Xiaomi” core design that the company has cooked up based on ARMv8 intellectual property licensed from ARM Holdings. There is chatter that one of the three Chinese exascale machines, which we wrote about here, will employ a future Phytium processor, but we were unable to confirm this with the Phytium executives at the event. What we can tell you is that the first engineering samples of the two Earth ARM chips, the FT-1500A/4 and the FT-1500A/16, as well as the one Mars ARM chip, the FT-2000/64, are back from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp and that we saw systems running the Kylin Linux operating system (a variant of Canonical’s Ubuntu) at the Hot Chips event.

Here are the key chip features from the FT-2000/64 product page: 

• Process：Manufacturing with 28nm process
• Core：Integrating sixty-four FTC661 cores
• Frequency：Running at 1.5GHz~2.0GHz
• Cache：Integrating 32MB L2 cache and extending 128MB LLC
• Extension Interface：Integrating eight proprietary extension interfaces, each delivering 19.2GB/s effective r/w bandwidth
• Memory Interface：Extending sixteen DDR3-1600 memory controllers, which can deliver 204.8GB/s memory access bandwidth.
• I/O Interface：Integrating two x16 or four x8 PCIE Gen3 interface
• Power：Max. power 100W
• Package：FCBGA package with 2892 pins

No pricing was provided on the new chips, and it’s unclear from the press release if the product is available today. The next time we hear about the FT-2000/64 might very well be when it shows up in a TOP500 supercomputer. Stay tuned.

Mega Processor to Understand Micro Processor

Have you ever imagine how the work or what's going on inside? Think about a bigger version of a microprocessor where you can walk inside and look how it is working in real.

You may have heard that your smartphone contains more computing power than all the computers used on the Apollo mission combined. But imagine taking the computing power of a Super Nintendo, and packing it into a computer the size of--a living room?

The "mega-processor" is essentially a blown up version of a tiny chip that allows you to see how all the elements of a computer chip join together and how it actually works.

A Cambridge resident has finished building a 10-metre wide and 2-metre high computer in his living room, which he uses to play the video game Tetris.

James Newman took four years and £40,000 to build the processor which works exactly like a small microprocessor chip in a regular desktop computer or laptop that's about the size of a sim card.

This room-sized megaprocessor has 40,000 transistors, 10,000 LED lights, weighs around half a tonne (500kg) and burns 500W of electricity, according to Newman, who explains the entire contraption in a video.

James Newman said his Mega Processor relies almost entirely on the hand-soldered components, and will ultimately demonstrate how data travels through and is processed in a simple CPU core. He's just finished putting together the general purpose registers, and in May completed the arithmetic and logic unit.

Each transistor acts like a digital switch, and can be chained together to form huge decision-making circuits that execute software, instruction by instruction.

Newman, whose background is in software development and FPGA programming, told The Register he has spent about £40k on the project to date. He started planning the processor in 2012, and began building the beast a year later.