14 DAY TRIAL // Shortly after ARM announced its next-generation v8 processors architecture with support for the 64-bit instruction set, AMCC has demoed the first chip to be built using this core and which is destined to make its appearance in servers as soon as 2012.
The chip is called X-Gene and it packs multiple 3GHz cores compliant with the ARM 64-bit v8 architecture.
The system-on-a-chip device use a quad-issue, out-of-order superscalar design and also sports Ethernet MACs, PCI Express and Serial ATA controllers, all linked on an 80 GByte/second fabric.
AMCC showed a working version of a chip in an FPGA emulation, which will begin shipping in January, according to EE Times, with the first silicon samples being expected to arrive in the second half of 2012.
"Our next-generation of multicore SoCs will bring in a new era of energy efficient performance that doesn’t break the bank on a limited power supply," said Paramesh Gopi, chief executive of AMCC.
In addition to AMCC, other companies are developing server chips based the ARM architecture. These include Marvell and Calxeda, but both of these processors are designed around the current ARM v7 32-bit architecture.
When it comes to 64-bit ARM processors and the upcoming v8 Arch, the British company has licensed the architecture to three lead partners. AMCC is of course one of them, while the other two are Nvidia and Microsoft.
Nvidia will probably use the ARM v8 design for its upcoming Project Denver processor, which the Santa Clara chip maker said previously that it will come with support for the 64-bit instruction set.
ARM's next-generation architecture includes two main execution states, AArch64 and Aarch32, and it's designed to fully support software developed for the current 32-bit ARM v7a processors. ARM expects the first servers to use ARM v8 processor to arrive in 2014.