Chip maker AMD is launching its first processors based on ARM technology this year. The first ARM chips from the company are aimed at servers rather than desktops, notebooks, or tablets. But software and hardware developers can now apply for a development kit which is basically a microATX PC motherboard with a quad-core AMD Opteron A1100-Series processor and 16GB of memory.

amd arm

The Opteron A1100 Series processor is an ARM Cortex-A57 chip based on ARMv8 architecture. It’s a 64-bit processor with up to 4 MB of shared L2 cache and 8MB of shared L3 cache, support for up to 4 memory modules, 8 Serial ATA 3 ports, 8 lanes of PCI Express, and 2 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The developer kit runs Linux software based on Fedora and supports Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, and Java

AMD also plans to offer an octa-core version of the Opteron A1100 Series processor.

The Opteron A1100 development kit isn’t aimed at consumers… and it doesn’t come cheap. It sells for $2,999 and it’s designed to help developers get ready for the launch of AMD’s ARM-based server chips in 2015.

If all goes according to plan, you’ll probably never notice if websites you visit are using servers based on ARM or x86 technology. But ARM servers could reduce power consumption which could save a lot of money and carbon emissions.

If AMD makes a splash with its server chips, we may also see the company launch ARM-based chips for consumer devices in the future.

via AMD

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,546 other subscribers

4 replies on “AMD launches dev kit with 64-bit ARM-based server chips”

  1. Finally they did it, in my opinion arm based chips are the key to break out of intel mastership for amd. I however would like to see a cheaper device for home-server use at a price tag of ~100-200€

  2. Well this sounds very interesting, the insane pricing probably means most people will never see it. They must have really wanted only specific developers at bigger businesses messing with it.
    At least the nvidia board is only $192.

    1. The price is almost certainly because it’s a dev board with early silicon. Hopefully they can soon ramp up production to get the prices down.

  3. Now let’s see if we can match A15’s time to market. Late 2011 we had dev kits, mid 2012 we had devices on the market. By that measure we should have A57 devices in early 2015.

Comments are closed.