ARM aims at the server market with new 64-bit architecture ARMv8
The developer of ARM chips introduced recently the eighth generation of its instruction set architecture (ISA). ARMv8 ISA extends the current architecture ARMv7 64-bit memory addressing.
The company notes that this move will allow the company to find a place chips in the server market and other business sectors, bringing the benefits of energy efficiency in a market that is increasingly faced with the problem of power consumption and computational efficiency.
Previous instruction set architecture ARMv7 provides 32-bit virtual address space, expandable to 40-bit. This allowed the chips to ARMv7, such as the Cortex A8 and Cortex A9, the underlying mass smartphone applications to provide 4GB of memory, potentially addressing with up to 1TB of physical memory.
For the more traditional tasks, which use the core ARM, 4GB is enough, but the company wants to break away from the market of mobile devices and embedded systems in new areas. 64-bit addressing allows applications to easily handle much larger volumes of data, making it necessary in areas such as databases or scientific data processing. ARM chips ARMv8 will assume a new role, while remaining energy efficient – it is the latter advantage allowed them to be widely distributed in the market of smartphones and tablets.
64-bit software is also becoming more common on the PC, allowing programs like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Excel to effectively handle more than overall figures and tables. As you know, the market next year will Windows 8 includes support for ARM. Thus, the 64-bit addressing in the future may prove useful in this area. Learn more about mp3!
ARMv8 ISA instructions and describes the behavior of 64-bit chip ARM, allowing developers of operating systems and compilers begin making the changes necessary to support these chips. The processors will be able to handle ARMv8 both 32 – and 64-bit mode and will provide support functions such ARMv7, virtualization, SIMD-instructions Neon and security features TrustZone.
Developers of hardware solutions, however, will have to wait longer. ARM plans to release the first chip to support ARMv8 next year and forward to the prototype system based on such processors in 2014. Hewlett-Packard may well be among the first clients – recently told Bloomberg that the company intends to produce servers based on chips ARM.