Marvell Unveils Quad-Core ARM Chip for Cloud-Computing
Marvell, a leading developer of various chips based on ARM architecture, on Monday unveiled its new system-on-chip (SoC) product – called Armada XP (extreme performance) – that features four ARM cores and is aimed at “enterprise-class cloud computing applications”. The Armada XP is the first actual ARM-based solution that is designed for servers.
The Armada XP is based on four Marvell-designed ARM v7 MP cores operating at 1.60GHz. The SoC integrates 2MB of L2 cache (hardware cache coherency is supported, which may mean that symmetric multi-processing capability can also be available) and sports single-channel DDR3 memory controller with support for ECC at 800MHz clock rate. In addition, the Armada XP features quad x4 PCI Express interfaces, multiple USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet ports, Serial ATA ports, security engine and other I/O peripherals to make system designs simple and economical. Just like other ARM-based SoCs from Marvell, it features advanced power management technologies. According to the developer, the Armada XP can achieve 16 600DMIPS performance at less than 10W.
“Marvell's introduction of a powerful solution for enterprise-class cloud computing applications is a very important milestone in the mobile Internet revolution – cloud computing mobile servers like those powered by the Armada XP are the key link in what I envision to be a seamless, unified ecosystem of mobile connected devices, information appliances and smart 'furnishings’,” said Weili Dai, co-founder of Marvell.
