Tilera has announced a new 64-bit processor series for cloud datacenters that offers up to 10x the performance per-watt of Intel’s Sandy Bridge chipset.
“We have been working with the largest cloud computing companies for two years to design a processor that addresses their biggest pain points,” said Tilera exec Ihab Bishara.
“The TILE-Gx 3000 series [boasts] features like 64-bit processing, virtualization support and high processor frequency – which were specifically implemented for our web customers. Clearly, the era of 20-30% incremental gains is over.”
The TILE-Gx 3000 lineup was developed using TSMC’s 40 nanometer fabrication process.
Each core features a three-issue, 64-bit ALU with an advanced virtual memory system, 32 kilobytes (kB) of L1 I-cache, 32 kB of L1 D-cache and 256 kB L2 cache, with up to 32 megabytes L3 coherent cache across the device.
Processor utilization is optimized using advanced memory stripping that leverages up to 4 integrated 72-bit DDR3 memory controllers which support up to one terabyte (TB) total capacity. The TILE-Gx 3000 also integrates smart NIC hardware for preprocessing, load balancing and buffer management of incoming traffic.
According to Bishara, the processors were designed to target scale-out datacenters running throughput-oriented applications, such as:
- Web applications, which require ultra-low latency.
- Database applications like NoSQL and in-memory databases.
- Data mining applications such as Hadoop that rely on high disk throughput and data processing.
- Video transcoding.
As expected, the TILE-Gx 3000 family – supported with the latest Linux release (2.6.36) – is capable of handling most common 64-bit cloud applications.
The standard tool chain includes Gcc, G++, Gdb, Gprof, OProfile, perf event, Mudflap, Eclipse, while full support of standard languages encompasses ANSI C/C++, Java, PHP, Perl and Python.
The first of the TILE-Gx family of processors, the 36-cores device, will be sampling in July of 2011, with the 64 and 100-core chips slated to hit the streets in 2012.
