The server CPU Grace from Nvidia is intended to snatch market shares from the top dogs AMD Epyc and Intel Xeon with high performance and energy efficiency.
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Nvidia’s first ARM processor is said to put pressure on server CPUs from Intel and AMD.
© nvidia.com
A year ago we reported for the first time on the manufacturer Nvidia’s plans to release Grace, its first ARM-based CPU. In the meantime, the intention of the graphics card manufacturer has apparently become more concrete. Nvidia presented the new processor for the first time at the GTX 2022. Compared to an Intel Xeon 8360Y, it should be significantly more efficient and faster at the same time.
1TB per second
The Grace CPU is said to combine up to 144 ARM cores. This would double the efficiency compared to an x86 processor. In addition, a first comparison with an Intel Ice Lake Xeon was published. The calculation of a weather forecast was chosen as an example. In the very special test run, the Grace CPU clearly beat a system with two Xeon 8360Y. While throughput is twice as high, efficiency is 2.3 times better. Grace should also reduce the bottleneck between CPU and GPU. There is also a change from DDR4 to LPDDR5X memory. This should further increase throughput. Nvidia speaks of a memory bandwidth of 1 TB per second.
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AMD and Intel in focus
The official market launch of the Grace processors is expected for next year. Until then, Nvidia will have to keep convincingly that the new CPUs can outperform the competition in the form of AMD’s Epyc and Intel’s Sapphire Rapid processors. It remains to be seen whether Nvidia only wants to supply servers with the new processors in the medium term. Currently, however, only chips are planned that should compete against established server CPUs from AMD and Intel.
