Multi-core processors for software ecosystems

Targeting OpenDataPlane (ODP), OpenFastPath (OFP) and ARM network functions virtualisation (NFV) ecosystem communities, the ARMADA 8040 is based on a quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 processor and includes full CPU and I/O virtualization, an advanced networking packet processor and rich state-of-the-art connectivity. Collaboration with the software ecosystem will deliver an open source ODP platform for middleware and applications on the community board. Additionally, Marvell and ARM have partnered to offer university developer students access to ARMADA 8040 platforms.

The ARMADA 8040 is a scalable, virtual System-on-Chip (Marvell vSoC) that supports a wide range of IP appliances, secured routers, unified control and data plane applications, NFV applications, virtual CPE, enterprise applications and data centre applications. The cost-effective, hyper-scale vSoC also delivers a high level of integration and efficiency, as well as leading performance and power.

“We’re excited to introduce the ARMADA 8040 networking community board as the first product in our upcoming high-performance multi-core series,” said Michael Zimmerman, Vice President and General Manager, connectivity, storage and infrastructure business unit at Marvell Semiconductor. “We are happy to extend our collaboration with ARM to enable the ARMADA 8040 networking community board and look forward to launching our 8, 16 and 32 cores during the first quarter of 2017.”

“Ongoing transitions in network infrastructure to software-defined, virtualised network functions (VNFs) are driving developer needs for cost-optimised hardware platforms coupled with scalable, open source-based software,” said Charlene Marini, Vice President, segment marketing, ARM. “The open availability of the cost-optimised ARMADA 8040 combined with the ODP platform further accelerates networking developer communities, enabling the rapid optimisation and validation of VNF applications on the ARM architecture.”

As the first-of-its-kind networking community board, the ARMADA 8040 leverages Marvell’s Modular Chip (MoChi) technology interface to enable driver-transparent expansion beyond the standard device offering, and exposes 10GbE, 2.5GbE,  1GbE , PCIe3.0, USB3.0, SATA3.0 and SD3.0 interfaces.

Marvell’s software offering for the ARMADA 8040 networking community board includes a fully open source ODP implementation, in addition to U-Boot, UEFI, Linux LTS kernel 4.4.x, Yocto 2.1, netmap and OFP. It will also support mainline Linux kernel, mainline U-Boot and mainline UEFI EDK2.

Features of Marvell’s ARMADA 8040 Hyper scale vSoC include:

• Quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 at 2.0GHz
• 1MB shared L2 cache; 1MB exclusive L3 cache
• Full ARMv8-A CPU virtualisation and I/O virtualisation
• High throughput low latency coherent memory subsystem
• Networking packet processor with 2x10GbE + 4x2.5GbE connectivity
• Scale to multi-port of 1GbE and 10GbE
• SuitB compatible, 10Gbp/s throughout security engine, IPSEC and SSL protocols offload
• DDR3/3L/4 32b/64b+ECC extension 
• SATA3.0, USB3.0, PCIe3.0

Marvell’s ARMADA 8040 networking community board is available for pre-orders; for more information please visit http://www.marvell.com/embedded-processors/armada-80xx/.