Cavium Adds Support for NVIDIA GPU Accelerators in 64-bit ARMv8-A ThunderX Processor Family

Solutions combining ThunderX with NVIDIA Tesla GPUs to accelerate the most demanding data analytics and scientific computing applications

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 16, 2015 – Cavium, Inc. (NASDAQ: CAVM), a leading provider of semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for enterprise, data center, cloud, wired and wireless networking, today announced it has added support for NVIDIA® Tesla® GPU accelerators in its ThunderX ARM^® processor family.

The ThunderX product family is Cavium’s 64-bit ARMv8 server processor for next generation data center and cloud applications. The ThunderX family integrates up to 48 high performance ARMv8-A custom cores, single and dual socket configurations, high memory bandwidth, large memory capacity, integrated hardware accelerators, integrated feature rich high bandwidth network and storage IO, fully virtualized core and IO, and scalable high bandwidth, low latency Ethernet fabric ThunderX enables best in class performance per dollar and performance per watt.

The NVIDIA Tesla Accelerated Computing Platform is the leading platform for accelerating data analytics, deep learning and scientific computing. By adding support for Tesla GPUs, Cavium will further enhance the performance and compute efficiency that ThunderX delivers to the server market.

Many key application and market segments will benefit directly from this combination, including:

• High performance computing (HPC) workloads that require high levels of double precision floating point compute performance. These compute workloads also require high data throughput and compute density which ThunderX delivers in both 48 core single socket configurations and 96 core dual socket configurations.
• Data analytics workloads that require real-time results to drive critical business decisions. The integration of compute and storage that ThunderX delivers in an optimized SoC (System on Chip) is critical to providing the complete system solution required for leading data scientists.

Cavium will work closely with NVIDIA to optimize the system hardware and software to enable the combination of Tesla GPU accelerators with Cavium’s ThunderX processors.

“Our collaboration with NVIDIA is yet another demonstration of the Workload Optimized focus that Cavium is driving in the server market with ThunderX,” said Gopal Hegde, VP/GM, Data Center Processor Group at Cavium. “NVIDIA’s leadership in high-performance computing solutions for the HPC and data analytics markets is well recognized and complements Cavium’s continued innovation in processors for next generation data center and cloud applications. Our partners and customers will benefit with this collaboration as we continue to drive application optimization, performance efficiency and TCO advantage with ThunderX.”

“GPU accelerators enable innovative ARM technology providers like Cavium to deliver a new class of efficient, high-performance computing solutions to HPC and enterprise customers,” said Sumit Gupta, general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. “We look forward to working with Cavium to deliver an expanded range of computing solutions to accelerate customers’ computationally intensive scientific, engineering and data analytics workloads.”

The ThunderX family includes multiple workload optimized SKUs that enable servers and appliances that are optimized for compute, storage, network and secure compute workloads. The ThunderX processor family is fully compliant with ARMv8 architecture specifications as well as ARM’s SBSA and SBBR standards and is widely supported by industry leading OS, Hypervisor and SW tool and application vendors.

ThunderX customer reference platforms with NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators will be on display in Cavium’s booth #511 at the GPU Technology Conference, McEnery Convention center in San Jose from Tuesday March 17^th to Thursday March 19^th.

ThunderX processors with support for NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators are expected to be available in Q2’2015.