Hewlett Packard Enterprise is adding Ampere Arm processors to its popular ProLiant server range, in a bid to deliver better performance with reduced power consumption for cloud native workloads.
HPE said the blockbuster deal with Ampere makes it the first tier-one server provider to launch a compute product with “optimised cloud-native silicon” for cloud service providers and digital first enterprises.
Ampere Computing was founded in 2018 by former Intel president Renée James, who hired Jeff Wittch, the former Intel senior director of cloud business and platforms as the startup's chief product officer.
The new HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen11 server with a 64-bit Ampere Altra Max system-on-a-chip features one socket and 128 cores, and runs at up to 3 GHz clock speed.
Each core has 1 megabyte of level 2 cache; there's also 64 KB of L1 D-cache per core, and 64 KB of I-cache.
Altra Max supports 128 lanes of PCIe Gen4 peripheral interconnects, and can use 8*72-bit error correction DDR4-3200 memory channels.
Its processor is optimised for any scale out, modern workload that is designed to be cloud native in a full stack development environment.
Single thread performance on the Altra Max is boosted by the processor running at constant clock speed.
Ampere chief executive James said her company is “thrilled” to be working with HPE.
“For a person that has worked for years in semiconductors the day that your microprocessor is put into a new system is really the day that you celebrate the fact that it becomes real for customers,” she said.
“Today is a wonderful day for us. We are super thankful that Hewlett Packard Enterprise is continuing to lean into the future,” James added.
The Ampere processors were designed to meet the rigorous requirements expected from a tier one server vendor like HPE including the ability to run existing HPE software.
HPE's ProLiant RL300 Gen11 will be available in the third calendar quarter this year.
It features all standard ProLiant features including ILO for server management and HPE’s Silicon Root of trust, along with OPENBMC for open source environments.
The new HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen11 server will be offered both as a standard product and as an HPE GreenLake cloud service, through the company's distributors and channel partners.
HPE general manager of compute Neil MacDonald said the Ampere processor on ProLiant addresses the many challenges faced by cloud service providers and digital-first enterprises including budget, economics, space, power efficiency and sustainability.
“This will enable more efficient infrastructures in those use cases,” he said.
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