AMD reveals the 8-core Opteron A1100, its first ARM processor

Around 15 months ago, AMD announced that it would be building 64-bit ARM based SoCs for servers in 2014. Less than a month into 2014, AMD made good on its promise and officially announced the Opteron A1100: a 64-bit ARM Cortex A57 based SoC. The Opteron A1100 features either 4 or 8 AMD Cortex A57 cores. There’s only a single die mask so we’re talking about harvested die to make up the quad-core configuration.

AMD made some noise Tuesday at Open Compute Summit V by unveiling its first ARM-based server chip using 28-nanometer processing technology. During a keynote address, Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD’s server business unit, said the AMD Opteron A1100 series, codenamed “Seattle,” not only signals the chipmaker’s commitment to becoming the “leader in ARM CPUs for servers” but the dawn of new era for data management. “This is not a one-generation process,” he said. “There will be generation after generation after generation and each will improve and be more closely tied to the software and hardware enclosure it lives in.”