Marvell has debuted a quad-core, ARM-based cloud computing SoC. Known as the Armada XP, the chip integrates four 1.6GHz CPU cores with a host of I/O peripherals.
According to Marvell co-founder Weili Dai, the Armada XP delivers the “best” performance per watt and can be scaled to power high performance networking web servers, as well as high volume home server products, Network Attached Storage (NAS) and media servers.
The enterprise-oriented processor – which is based on ARM’s v7 MP compatible CPU – integrates 2 MB of L2 cache and supports 64-bit DDR3 memory interface with ECC at an 800MHz clock rate.
The SoC also combines quad x4 PCI-express (PCI-e) interfaces, multiple USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet ports, SATA ports, security engine and other I/O peripherals.
Additional specs include:
- 16,600 DMIPS performance at less than 10 watts.
- Heterogeneous multiprocessing (SMP/AMP/Mixed) with hardware-based cache coherence.
- Up to 2MB system level two cache.
- Supplements the ARMADA family of single, dual-core and tri-core processors for easy software porting.
- 64-bit DDR2/DDR3/DDR3L memory interface with ECC support at up to 800MHz clock rates.
- 4 PCI-e Gen 2.0 units.
- 4 enterprise class Gigabit networking ports.
- Up to 16 high speed Marvell SERDES lanes with multi functionality (PCI-e, SATA, SGMII, QSGMII).
- Multiple USB ports.
- Ultra low power consumption with advanced power management capabilities.
