2016年10月25日 作者：Sanjay Charagulla 云计算和高性能计算（HPC）正在以一种大的方式改变数据中心行业。这个领域最大的驱动力是消费升级和大数据，使我们的轨迹变得更加立体。全球云计算IP流量将在未来5年内翻两番以上，从2014年到2019年的年复合增长率为33%，并占数据中心总流量的80%以上。同时，超过86%的工作负载将由云数据中心处理。随着快速变化的步伐，整个数据中心的服务器计算和数据存储需求将继续大幅增长，导致数据中心OEMs部署越来越多的服务器和存储。 来源。思科VNI全球云指数，2016 仅仅在几年前，公司还在争论他们是否已经为云计算做好准备。今天，这不再是一个是否的问题--而是关于他们能从云服务中获得多少。服务器处理器的出货量估计在未来四年将以平均近25%的年复合增长率增长，达到约2500万台处理器的总量。例如，在去年出货的1100多万台服务器中，x86芯片组被用于其中的980万台。在2016年第二季度，英特尔占x86服务器芯片出货量的99.7%。云计算也正在迫使硬件和软件世界中长期存在的参与者发生变化。最近，IBM公布了其Power9芯片的新细节--该公司计划在自己的服务器中使用的微处理器系列的下一个产品，而AMD宣布了其用于服务器芯片的新Zen技术。这里是IBM去年的官方Power处理器路线图，看看AMD的Zen微架构与它的其他服务器内核有什么不同。随着数据服务器公司寻求在降低成本的同时提高功率和性能，芯片制造商们正在迎接挑战，寻找在保持低成本的同时为设备提高速度和功能的方法。例如，由于其具有竞争力的功率和性能，在芯片尺寸降低约10%的情况下，GLOBALFOUNDRIES先进的14纳米FinFET技术（14LPP），支持从移动设备到服务器的广泛产品，如AMD和IBM的服务器芯片产品。使得芯片x86处理器的性能提高了3GHz以上，GF的14纳米FinFET技术挖掘了三维、完全耗尽的FinFET晶体管的优势，与28纳米散装CMOS相比，性能提高了50%，总功率降低了65%，取得了令人瞩目的成就。 资料来源：《环球时报》。2016年GF技术大会 The IBM and AMD announcements along with GF competitive advanced node technology, represent new competition to Intel’s dominance in the server market. In a recent strategy shift, IBM’s Power9 architecture will be offered to other hardware companies. Subsequently, IBM Power9 processors are not only targeting to HPC and enterprise server markets, but also enabling solutions for big data analytics, artificial intelligence, cognitive and hyper-cloud computing platforms. At a Silicon Valley technical conference this summer, AMD rolled out a demonstration of the performance with a head-to-head comparison of its Zen Core, claiming a 5x improvement in cache bandwidth with the redesigned memory subsystem. Overall, it is a core that contributes a 75 percent higher capacity to schedule instructions and a 50 percent greater ability to execute and issue them. With the advent of cloud computing, large service providers such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon are opting for systems based processors and open-source or in-house applications. Earlier this year, Google announced that they are working with Rackspace to co-develop an open server architecture design specification based on IBM’s new Power9 CPUs. The partnership with Nvidia should also help IBM’s Power9 become popular in servers as well as in supercomputers. Along with these two server giants, many other ARM processor-based chip vendors and other startups are building ARM server chips to target cloud datacenter markets. ARM estimates that 13 companies already are using its technology in chips for servers and other data-center hardware, which are expected to compete predominantly in single-socket and dual-socket servers with Intel server chip products. Server companies and other ARM based chip vendors are aiming at Intel’s chip dominance, targeting the~$12B server market for scale-out data centers. Overall in the next few years, these processor technologies and new solutions could begin driving a 15–25 percent growth in the server chip market.
