China's SpacemiT develops 64-core RISC-V datacenter CPU on 12nm

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SpacemiT, a China-based CPU developer, has introduced the VitalStone V100, a server processor with up to 64 RISC-V cores, reports Heise Online. While the CPU is aimed at modern workloads, the single-thread performance of the processor is comparable to outdated Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors.

SpacemiT's VitalStone V100 processor is largely based on the OpenC910 project design, which is already used by Alibaba's T-Head Xuantie C910 processor. The X100 4-issue 12-stage out-of-order cores in the VitalStone V100 were developed in-house by SpacemiT. They are compliant with the RVA23 core specification and support 256-bit vector processing, standardized hypervisors and IOMMU (input-output memory management units), protection against certain side-channel attacks like Spectre or Meltdown, and RISC-V Boot and Runtime Services (BRS), which define how processors boot and interface with firmware and operating systems. The processor is made on a 12nm-class process technology and its maximum frequency is 2.50 GHz.

Performance-wise, each X100 core achieves a SPEC CINT2006 integer score of 9, translating to a total of 22.5 points at 2.5 GHz, according to Heise. This places it on par with older processors like the Intel Xeon E5520 (2.27 GHz, 24.1 points) and AMD Opteron 6212 (2.6 GHz, 22.9 points) but with a significantly higher core count, making it suitable for parallelized tasks, the source noted. The chip also delivers AI computational capabilities, offering 2.5 TOPS with INT8 data processing at its peak frequency, which is not something to write home about.

Launching a processor that offers performance on par with CPUs that are more than 10 years old would not make a lot of sense in the U.S. or Europe. But as China strives to reduce dependence on Western technologies in general and processors in particular, SpacemiT will certainly find customers for its 64-core VitalStone V100. Unfortunately, we have no idea about its pricing, nor pricing of servers based on the VitalStone V100 processors. Given that the CPU is based on the open-source RISC-V ISA and is made on a rather mature 12nm-class process technology, it is unlikely that it is an expensive CPU.

In addition to the VitalStone V100, SpacemiT also markets the Keystone K1, a RISC-V processor designed for laptops and single-board computers.

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums

pug_s

Why does Toms hardware complaining about the 'poor' single core performance in a 64 core cpu?
Reply
das_stig

TH are drinking the anti-China racist cool aid and should look at China's cpu development with neutral eyes, yes they can't compete with Intel/AMD/Arm at the moment, maybe they are a decade behind and to have something that can be used in real world tasks in such a short time frame is commendable. If western countries had put as much effort in, we probably would have had quantum computers coming in to Y2K.

See if I get censored by TH thought police !
Reply
nookoool

I thought all generalized Risc-V processor seem to be pretty weak anyways compare to anything modern.... also shouldn't it be compare to ARM servers instead? Thought at one point they also went for weak core with high core count for the server space.
Reply
Dementoss

Admin said:
Unfortunately, we have no idea about its pricing, nor pricing of servers based on the VitalStone V100 processors.
I don't imagine many people, reading this article, will be particularly bothered about the prices.
Reply
bit_user

pug_s said:
Why does Toms hardware complaining about the 'poor' single core performance in a 64 core cpu?
But they're comparing it to the single-core performance of other multi-core server CPUs, so it's a relevant comparison.

If we know how fast their single-thread performance compares, then we can scale the performance of the compared CPU by the core-count ratio to get a decent sense of the multi-core performance and how that would compare to modern server CPUs.
Reply
bit_user

das_stig said:
TH are drinking the anti-China racist cool aid and should look at China's cpu development with neutral eyes,
I don't see anything racist about the article. Seems pretty fact-based, to me.

das_stig said:
yes they can't compete with Intel/AMD/Arm at the moment, maybe they are a decade behind and to have something that can be used in real world tasks in such a short time frame is commendable.
Whether or not it's commendable is a judgement that would require someone with deep experience in CPU design and a foot in the server world. The authors at this site don't have that kind of experience, so it's fine if they leave such notions for readers or others to decide.

The fact that you want them to be praising this CPU designer shows you're not unbiased.

I really don't see a problem with just reporting the facts as they are. That's called journalistic integrity. In fact, a good publication is careful not to mingle editorializing with reporting, which is actually something this site could be a little bit better at, although that's not necessarily what many of its readers want.

das_stig said:
If western countries had put as much effort in, we probably would have had quantum computers coming in to Y2K.
Quantum computers are completely different. I think there's no equivalence.
Reply
bit_user

nookoool said:
I thought all generalized Risc-V processor seem to be pretty weak anyways compare to anything modern....
The RISC-V IP cores that exist so far generally tend to be rather weak. Nothing about the ISA prevents someone from making one that's comparable in performance & efficiency to the latest x86 or ARM cores, though.

RISC-V's reputation for being weak stems from the fact that it first got a foothold in the low-power embedded market. It's a more recent development that people are using them to build server CPUs. There's a company called Ventanna, which is already on its second generation of RISC-V server CPUs (the first one was never publicly sold, making it more of a prototype). Here's some info about them, but it's pretty out-of-date. You can find more recent news, on the internet, pretty easily:
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/imagination-and-ventana-to-build-a-risc-v-cpu-gpu-platform

nookoool said:
also shouldn't it be compare to ARM servers instead?
Would've been nice, but they're probably limited in what's been published about it. SPEC2006 is an old benchmark that's rarely used any more, because it's heavily influenced by the amount of cache in modern CPUs and not a good test of the interconnect and memory subsystems. So, finding SPEC2006 scores for modern ARM server CPUs isn't necessarily easy.

What I think is more likely: the author was aware that most readers of this site are more familiar with x86 server CPUs and opted just to focus on how it compares to those.

nookoool said:
Thought at one point they also went for weak core with high core count for the server space.
AMD has a line of server CPUs which feature "compact" Zen cores. These have the same design and per-clock performance of full-sized Zen cores of the same generation, but don't clock as high and have half the per-core L3 cache.

Intel went further and started making server CPUs comprised entirely of their E-cores. Last year, they launched the first of these, which was their 144-core Sierra Forest. It has no hyper-threading and supports dual-CPU configurations. It caught up to AMD's Zen 4C EPYC, but was leapfrogged again by Zen 5 and Zen 5C EPYCs. The next one is called Clearwater Forest and should be a lot stronger.
Reply
thestryker

RISC-V has a long way to go, but I wouldn't be surprised if the developments out of China push the performance aspect forward. Now that RVA23 was ratified a few months ago there's at least a clear path for implementations. Outside of China I think it will take one of the big companies going all in for performant enough general purpose cores to happen. Qualcomm seems like the most likely candidate, but it's so capital intensive I'm not sure how likely it is for any publicly traded company to get it done in a quick time frame.
Reply
pug_s

bit_user said:
But they're comparing it to the single-core performance of other multi-core server CPUs, so it's a relevant comparison.

If we know how fast their single-thread performance compares, then we can scale the performance of the compared CPU by the core-count ratio to get a decent sense of the multi-core performance and how that would compare to modern server CPUs.
You're comparing apples to oranges here. These are low powered efficient cores compared to Intel/AMD server cores which are much more power hungry. Plus the fact that you have 64 of them which is probably not possible with the power envelope with the Xeon's Opteron's at that time.
Reply
bit_user

thestryker said:
RISC-V has a long way to go, but I wouldn't be surprised if the developments out of China push the performance aspect forward.
I expect China's main contribution will be towards helping flesh out Linux support for RISC-V, especially in server contexts that are still pretty limited. That's probably the main value of this CPU - as a development vehicle, not so much a deployment platform.

thestryker said:
Outside of China I think it will take one of the big companies going all in for performant enough general purpose cores to happen.
I mentioned Ventana. Also, depending on your definition of "general purpose", SiFive already has some pretty good cores. Then, there's Tenstorrent's cores, but I'm not sure those are RVA23-compliant (I think I read where somebody claimed they weren't, although that was a while ago).

Edit: see details below.
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