Arm Reveals Plans for Processors of the Future with Updated Neoverse CPU Roadmap

The News: Arm recently unveiled a revised and revamped product roadmap with new processor designs that target cloud, hyperscale and HPC workloads. The company expects its new processor, Arm Neoverse V2, to out-perform other CPUs, providing the highest per-thread performance possible for cloud, hyperscale, edge, and other high-performance compute. Read the full Press Release from Arm.

Arm Reveals Plans for Processors of the Future with Updated Neoverse CPU Roadmap

Analyst Take: It’s just a roadmap, but it’s going places. Arm introduced its first gen Arm Neoverse in 2018 in response to Intel’s Xeon processor as well as AMD’s Epyc chips. Since then, Arm has evolved the technology to include three different platforms: Arm V-Series, N-Series, and E-series. Each is aimed to target different tasks, but the latest announcement focuses primarily on the V-series.

Neoverse V2 Details

Organizations everywhere are trying to do more with less. They have more data, more applications, and more workloads, and need the infrastructure to support it all without increasing their carbon footprint. The Neoverse V2 platform, code name “Demeter” will feature the newest V-series core and the Arm CMN-700 mesh interconnect.

Partners like NVIDIA are already using the Neoverse V2. NVIDIA is leveraging the processor as the foundation for its Grace data center CPU, delivering double the performance per watt over servers powered by traditional architectures.

The Neoverse Revamp Matters

Why does Arm’s revamp matter? From where I stand, it matters for two main reasons.

First, it’s a major move away from industry-standard performance towards technology of the future. Rather than focusing on how to adapt today’s chips to meet the needs of edge, hyperscale, etc., Arm decided to completely re-write the script on how its processors operate so that it could build from a stronger foundation in coming years. The new design’s blueprints should allow chipmakers to create new and different solutions more quickly than in the past. That’s a bonus for businesses, which often need to pivot quickly to meet customer demands.

Second, Arm’s announcement seems to respond directly to customer demands for better power efficiency and lower carbon footprint. The more complex compute becomes, and the more data businesses continue to generate, the more power processors need to function. Arm says its Neoverse V2 platform will provide the top integer performance for both HPC and cloud. Final benchmarks will tell the full story, but no doubt Arm’s roadmap is getting more aggressive, and shows more ambition for server architectures, which will certainly be part of its growth story.

Arm has shown a strong trajectory and has largely cemented itself as part of the datacenter CPU story of the future. I anticipate this announcement may serve as a call to challenge from other industry CPU makers to up their game—and from my vantage point, the competition is a good thing for markets and consumers.

Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.

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The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.