In context: Ampere’s Arm-based Altra processor lineup options spectacular energy effectivity and efficiency, superior to x86 options in some conditions. They include multi-socket assist, with the corporate providing fashions with as much as 128 cores.
Overclocker and YouTuber der8auer posted a brand new video showcasing the efficiency of an Ampere Altra Q80-30 server processor and even delidded a pattern to see what’s underneath the IHS.
The Altra Q80-30 options 80 QuickSilver cores (based mostly on Arm’s Neoverse N1 structure derived from the Cortex-A76 present in some smartphone SoCs) and makes use of TSMC’s N7 manufacturing course of. It helps 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, eight channels of DDR4 reminiscence, and has a most frequency of 3GHz.
Der8auer ran Geekbench 5 on an air-cooled server powered by certainly one of these chips and bought a whopping 44,425 multi-core rating. For comparability, the present world report holder, a liquid-cooled AMD Threadripper 3990X that includes a large overclock, solely bought 34,735 factors in the identical check. The YouTuber additionally famous the spectacular energy effectivity of the Arm processor, with CPU-only energy draw peaking at simply 180W throughout testing.
Later within the video, der8auer delidded an Altra Q80-30 pattern (presumably already lifeless) utilizing the vice methodology. Surprisingly, Ampere opted to make use of customary thermal paste because the thermal interface materials as a substitute of soldering the IHS to the CPU die like Intel and AMD normally do. The firm seemingly took this route as a result of it is cheaper, as Arm processors are simpler to chill than x86 designs attributable to their superior energy effectivity.
The CPU die of the Altra Q80-30 measures about 22.5 mm x 25.5 mm, leading to a floor space of 574 mm2. Der8auer in contrast it side-by-side with an 18-core Intel Core i9-7980XE constructed on a 14nm node, which has a die measurement of 480 mm2. However, the Ampere chip has a bigger substrate and over twice the variety of pads on the again attributable to supporting way more PCIe lanes.
