Ampere Computing introduced its AmpereOne processor family in 2023, featuring up to 192 single-threaded cores, which was the highest number in the industry at the time.
Now, Ampere, founded in 2017 by former Intel president Renée James, is looking to push the boundaries even further with the announcement of AmpereOne Aurora, a 512-core CPU designed to meet the evolving needs of cloud-native workloads.
In recent years, Ampere has focused on developing innovative technologies for cloud infrastructures. As general-purpose and AI workloads converge in the cloud, the need for a platform that is efficient, air-cooled, and integrated with AI acceleration has become apparent.
Addressing the global challenge of AI power
AmpereOne Aurora integrates several of Ampere’s innovations, including custom cores, a proprietary mesh, and die-to-die interconnects via chiplets.
By incorporating Ampere’s proprietary AI acceleration directly into the silicon hardware, the new processor aims to significantly improve AI computing capabilities. It offers up to 512 Ampere cores, delivering more than three times the performance of its predecessors.
The scalable AmpereOne mesh enables seamless connectivity between multiple types of computing, while integrated Ampere AI IP and high-bandwidth memory further enhance performance.
The new processor will be able to scale across a variety of AI training and inference use cases, providing robust AI computing capabilities for workloads such as RAG and vector databases. Ampere claims it will deliver leading per-rack performance for AI computing, and its air-cooling capability enables deployment in any existing data center, including public clouds, enterprise setups, hyperscale data centers, and edge locations. This feature addresses the global AI power challenge by enabling efficient and versatile deployment.
Ampere’s collaborations with various partners and the AI Platform Alliance aim to create hardware solutions that offer a full spectrum of AI computing in an open and interoperable environment. Users can rely on accessible and affordable technologies to develop their own innovative AI products and services.
Despite these advances, the market for cloud-native solutions is highly competitive. With established players continually pushing the boundaries, some industry analysts may wonder whether Ampere’s efforts might come too late for it to gain significant traction.
