The well-known manufacturer Ampere has announced a fairly significant update to its roadmap, which now highlights the new processor AmpereOne Auroraan AI monster that sports 512 dedicated cores and with which it could compete with Intel or AMD without too much effort… well, or a little. We tell you all about it.
In reality, the AmpereOne Aurora is a processor that is more designed for AI workloads but in the cloud, what is known as “Cloud-native AI Computing”, which is why it is not really designed to compete with NVIDIA, but rather with Google, for example (in any case, it cannot be ruled out that a company like Google decides to buy a large batch of these processors for its cloud servers, we will see).
This is the Ampere AmpereOne Aurora
The recently announced 512-core Ampere AmpereOne Aurora integrates AI acceleration and leverages on-chip high-bandwidth memory (HBM), promising up to 3x the performance of current AmpereOne processors. Aurora is designed to handle AI training and inference workloads, and with it Ampere aims to become a major player in the AI computing market.
The manufacturer has not yet revealed the manufacturing node on which these Aurora processors will be manufactured, but Ampere has suggested the use of multiple chiplets in a scalable mesh architecture. The company’s recent appearance at an Intel event has raised some speculation about a possible collaboration between the companies, for example to use Intel’s 18A process to manufacture these processors, although as we say, this is mere speculation and nothing has been absolutely defined.
In any case, these are the main features with which Ampere has described the new Aurora processor which, as you can see in the roadmap we have placed above, is a product that is still in the design phase:
- 512 Ampere cores delivering up to 3x the performance of current AmpereOne processors.
- Scalable AmpereOne mesh, allowing the connection of all types of devices.
- Additionally, for the first time, Ampere AI technology is integrated at the hardware level, in the silicon itself together with HBM memory.
This announcement positions Ampere as a strong contender in the AI processor market, especially among high-core processors, competing directly with Intel and AMD. The focus on AI capabilities and cloud-native design could give Ampere a unique reason for companies interested in cloud AI computing to look at them.
Ampere currently offers processors with up to 192 cores and is based on 5-nanometer technology. Later this year, they plan to introduce the AmpereOne M series, which will retain the 192 cores but introduce a 12-channel DDR5 platform, first unveiled at Computex 2023. An upgraded version is expected next year that will increase the core count to 256.