Ampere Computing is moving purposefully in the direction of a CPU alternative for data center use. The Ampere Altra is based on the Neoverse-N1 design from ARM and offers 80 ARM v8.2 + cores in one socket. Up to 80 cores in a power budget of 250 W should be offered to established manufacturers such as Intel and AMD compete. As Altra Max 2021 even variants with 80 cores should follow.

So far, however, there have only been many announcements and few tangible ones, even if Ampere naturally presented its own benchmarks and wanted to emphasize, among other things, the advantages of a stable clock over dynamic boost clock rates. Now Anandtech presents a first detailed and independent test of two Altra Q 80 – 33 (80 cores with 3.3 GHz) in a dual socket system (Mount Jade). The processor in the test system still includes 256 GB of RAM per socket – in eight DIMMs per socket in order to fully utilize the 8-channel memory interface.

The opponents of the two Altra Q 80 – 33 were two AMD EPYC 7742 each with 64 cores with a TDP of 225 W and two Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 each with 28 Cores at 205 W.

The processors and the system leave a different picture in the benchmarks. In the single-threaded test using Spec 2017 integer, the Altra Q intersects 80 – 33 very good – is on a level with the Xeon Platinum 8280 and ahead of the EPYC 7742. In the floating point area, however, the established processors are stronger. It looks much better if the Altra Q 80 – 33 can use all of its 80 cores.

The ARM processor is really good in the LLVM compiling and the NAMD performance. This is where the old Q 80 – 33 in 1S and 2S configuration on par with one or two EPYC 7742. In the chosen benchmark in 1S configuration, these two processors are even faster than two Xeon Platinum 8280.

Across all tests it can be said that the Altra Q 80 – 33 not only quickly, but also efficiently are. Although the TDP provides for a power budget of 250 W, the system does not use this for the 3.3 GHz clock rate. This must also be taken into account when assessing performance. Price also plays a role. Ampere calls for the Altra Q 80 – 33 a list price of 4. 050 US dollars, an EPYC 7742 costs around 5 in this country 200 Euro and a Xeon Platinum 8280 at least 8. 600 Euro, albeit one should note here that these prices in the free trade have very little to do with what server providers are offered at reduced prices.

Whether and where amps can be compared with the Altra processors in the data center Segment will be able to establish itself remains to be seen. Hyperscalers like Amazon have already developed their own processors. AMD is nibbling on Intel’s market share, but the chip giant is supposed to strike back 2021 / 22 . First, however, AMD will launch the 3rd generation EPYC processors based on the Zen 3 architecture.