Cavium ThunderX 48 Core SoC - Discussion

[Patrick]

Making a placeholder thread to update. The Cavium ThunderX 48 core ARMv8 SoC is in the STH lab:


Test Platforms

Gigabyte 1U

• Single 48-core ThunderX processor
• 8x DDR4 RDIMM slots (128GB RAM installed)
• 16x SATA III slots
• 4x 3.5" bays
• 1x 40GbE (QSFP+) and 4x 10GbE (SFP+) networking
• IPMI remote management

Gigabyte 2U

• Dual 48-core ThunderX processors
• 16x DDR4 RDIMM slots (256GB RAM installed)
• 32x SATA III slots
• 24x 2.5" bays
• 3x 40GbE (QSFP+) and 4x 10GbE (SFP+) networking
• IPMI remote management

OSes we are using:

• Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (patched)
• Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (when final validation occurs)

 

[sean]

Only a single socket? That's too bad.

Nonetheless, I'm curious what the differences between gcc 4.8.2 (14.04) and 5.3.1 (16.04) mean. I heard multiple times on the importance of using the latest 5.x but never numbers.

 

[Patrick]

Only a single socket? That's too bad.

Nonetheless, I'm curious what the differences between gcc 4.8.2 (14.04) and 5.3.1 (16.04) mean. I heard multiple times on the importance of using the latest 5.x but never numbers.

From what I am gathering, 14.04 means you probably need patches/ little fixes. 16.04 someone told me will be 95% out of the box (still in validation.)

I also hear that OpenSSL 1.1 might be a big boost for these chips.

 

[Patrick]

 

[Patrick]

Test Platforms

Gigabyte 1U

• Single 48-core ThunderX processor
• 8x DDR4 RDIMM slots (128GB RAM installed)
• 16x SATA III slots
• 4x 3.5" bays
• 1x 40GbE (QSFP+) and 4x 10GbE (SFP+) networking
• IPMI remote management

Gigabyte 2U

• Dual 48-core ThunderX processors
• 16x DDR4 RDIMM slots (256GB RAM installed)
• 32x SATA III slots
• 24x 2.5" bays
• 3x 40GbE (QSFP+) and 4x 10GbE (SFP+) networking
• IPMI remote management

The dual socket Cavium ThunderX machine has arrived. Benchmarks should start trickling in next week as we have Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on the new 2P system and have the required firmware update and disks imaged with 16.04 on the UP system.

 

[Patrick]

For those that did not see, Johan published some initial benchmarks:
Investigating Cavium's ThunderX: The First ARM Server SoC With Ambition
I waited to get 16.04 (just got updated firmware yesterday) so ours will follow soon.

 

[sean]

I saw that from elsewhere and admit to being a bit disappointed that 14.04 was used. I know it makes sense from his perspective, but with such a new system and architecture with an old OS makes for naturally biased benchmarks. I wonder if the available software would have been better with a different distro. I know openSUSE 13.2 (albeit with Cavium's kernel) works well.

 

[Patrick]

When I picked up the STH UP Cavium system, our box had a post-it that said "Patrick". The (same) one below said "Johan." I think our systems were identical and we got them just as 16.04 was released but not validated on the systems.

I can tell you that there is a HUGE difference between 16.04 and 14.04 in terms of ease of use.