ADLINK’s Ampere® Altra® Developer Platform with Arm SystemReady certification

• ADLINK presents a COM HPC-based Ampere Altra workstation that is Arm SystemReady SR-certified. ADLINK COM HPC Ampere Altra Developer Platform is available in a variety of configurations, including 32/64/80-cores.
• The Ampere Altra development system is based on an Ampere Altra SoC, using the Arm Neoverse N1 platform, designed to empower developers with the combination of server-class computational prowess and extreme scalability. The system supports up to 80 Arm v8.2 64-bit cores, 2.6GHz, and has a power demand of a mere 150W TDP.

ADLINK Technology Inc., a global leader in edge computing, announces the availability of the Ampere Altra  Developer Platform based on the COM-HPC Ampere® Altra® module, the world’s first 32/64/80-core COM-HPC based server type module with head-turning performance and scalability necessary to drive a variety of use cases across the cloud-to-edge development communities. Examples include real-time applications that require reliable and predictable processing of the most computationally demanding workloads like medical imaging and robotic surgery, stationary and mobile robotics, autonomous driving, test and measurement to multimedia broadcasting, and more.

Backed by a broad Arm® ecosystem with an Ampere® Altra® SoC at its core, using the Arm® Neoverse™ N1 platform, the Ampere Altra Developer Platform provides premium performance from a cloud-to-edge infrastructure, keeps an extremely low thermal envelope, lower TCO, and significantly lower power consumption than x86 designs.

The COM-HPC Ampere Altra Server Type module, the basis of the Ampere Altra Development Platform (AADP), delivers an unprecedented performance-power ratio. For example, while running 80 Ampere Altra cores at 2.6GHz, the typical usage power is below 115W. It provides three PCIe Gen4 x16 lanes with a homogeneous architecture and valuable computing power that effectively eliminates bottlenecks and restrictions typically caused by memory caches and system memory limits. The PCIe interfaces in this platform support qualified inline accelerator cards which can be easily plugged in to perform compute intense and low latency functions mostly popular with the 5G and telco applications. Ampere Altra is a high-performance, scalable, cloud-native processor with industry-leading power efficiency which unlocks new opportunities for developers from the edge, embedded, and other performance- and power-optimized applications.

“We are thrilled to have such an engaging and benchmark-setting collaboration with both Ampere and Arm. This resulted in ADLINK bringing the first Arm-based COM-HPC to the market last September. Ultimately, it spun up this revolutionary and powerful beast of a workstation built around the Ampere Altra 80 core SOC,” says Alex Wang, ADLINK’s senior product manager of embedded platforms and modules product center.

“This ground-breaking workstation is a unique opportunity for developers to facilitate almost any kind of Cloud Native application development on a high performance, approachable form factor provided via strong collaboration between ADLINK, Arm, and Ampere,” says Sean Varley, Senior Director of Solutions at Ampere.

The importance of being Arm SystemReady SR

ADLINK’s COM HPC based Ampere Altra Developer Platform (AADP) is the only Arm64 workstation on the market today with Arm SystemReady SR certification. Arm SystemReady is a compliance certification program based on a set of hardware and firmware standards: Base System Architecture (BSA) and Base Boot Requirements (BBR) specifications. The certification should give developers confidence that most standard Linux distributions can be installed out of the box, as you would expect from a consumer-based workstation.  This ensures that subsequent layers of software also ‘just work’.  SystemReady SR certification includes verification testing of Ubuntu Server 20.04.3, Windows PE (10.0.22000.1), VMware ESXi-Arm Fling v1.8, Fedora Server 35, FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE, CentOS stream 9, and Debian 11.2.

On top of comprehensive OS support and easy installation, SystemReady SR certification also means that the broad scope of software available to x86 and the Arm64 ecosystem can now also be applied to Arm64 workstations with little to no modifications.

"ADLINK’s Ampere Altra Developer Platform is a great addition to the expanding lineup of Arm SystemReady certified devices in the market,” said Imran Yusuf, director of hardware ecosystem, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm. “Software developers building on cloud-to-edge applications benefit from standardized hardware with high performance and cloud native-ready processing power from the Arm Neoverse-based Ampere Altra. Together with ADLINK and Ampere, we’re empowering developers with tools and systems that fuel innovation of tomorrow”.

“Ampere® Altra® is opening a new wave of possibilities for developers from Cloud to Edge. The ADLINK Ampere Altra Developer Platform enables cloud-native software development in a workstation form factor,” says Cindy Goldberg, VP of Silicon Alliances at Canonical. “And once production time comes, the COM-HPC Ampere® Altra® module ensures a frictionless move into vehicles onto the cloud and other edge devices. Canonical is not only very happy to include this cutting-edge solution to the Ubuntu Hardware Certified family, but also overjoyed to facilitate its future in new Edge markets,” she adds.

COM HPC Ampere Altra Developer Platform key features:

• Ampere® Altra® SoC
• Arm Neoverse N1-based platform
• Scalable, from 32 to 80 Ampere Altra cores (65W to 150W TDP)
• Up to 768 GB DDR4 with 6 individual memory channels for demanding workloads
• 3 x16 slots and 4 x4 slots PCIe Gen4
• Open Source Firmware (EDKII bootloader with TianoCore / UEFI)
• Arm SystemReady SR certified
• Gigabit Ethernet support: 4x 10GbE and 1x GbE (optional)
• Ubuntu certified for 20.04, SOAFEE-compliant

The Ampere Altra Developer Platform, based on the COM-HPC Ampere Altra Server Type module, can now be ordered online at ADLINK’s I-Pi theme and support site. The I-Pi site offers development platforms and kits with online ordering and worldwide shipping options. Additionally, it provides readily-accessible technical support pages and forums, with links to all software hosted on GitHub. You can also find more information about the COM-HPC Ampere Altra module from ADLINK’s official website here.