Apple Silicon, State-of-the-art ARM CPU
Tags: arm, apple, aws, gcp
Published: 2024-06-21 02:12:03

My Macbook air has M2 CPU. I want to deploy my Cloudforet application in my Macbook. But we have only X86 docker image, because github does not support ARM linux runner for github action. There is a way for building X86 and ARM docker image in one command, but it takes too much time. Because it is a cross compilation for ARM image build in X86 machine.

Suddenly, I just want to know about ARM CPU.

# Apple Silicon

| CPU Version | ARM Instruction Set | Manufacturer | Release Date |
| ---         | ---                 |  ---         | ---          |
| Apple M1    | ARMv8.5-A (3.2 GHz) | 5nm TSMC     | Nov. 2020    |
| Apple M2    | ARMv8.6-A (3.49 GHz) | 5nm TSMC     | Jun. 2022    |
| Apple M3    | ARMv8.6-A (4.05 GHz)  | 3nm TSMC     | Oct. 2023    |
| Apple M4    | ARMv9.2-A           | 3nm TSMC  | May  2024    |

# AWS

AWS provides Graviton instance

| CPU Version | ARM Instruction Set | Manufacturer | Release Date |
| ---         | ---                 |  ---         | ---          |
| Graviton    | ARMv8-A (2.3 GHz)   | 16nm TSMC    | Nov. 2018    |
| Graviton2   | ARMv8.2-A (2.5 GHz, Neoverse N1) | 7nm TSMC | Dec. 2019 |
| Graviton3   | ARMv8.4-A (2.6 GHz, Neoverse v1) | 5nm TSMC | May 2022 |
| Graviton4   | ARMv9.0-A (2.7 GHz, Neoverse v2) | 4nm TSMC |        |

In EC2 instances, 7 generation is Graviton3, 8 generation is Graviton4.
For example c7g.large is 2 vcores, 4GB memory Graviton3 CPU instance.

# Google Cloud

Google Cloud also provides ARM VM.

| CPU Version | ARM Instruction Set | Manufacturer | Release Date |
| ---         | ---                 |  ---         | ---          |
| Ampere Altra | ARMv8.2-A (3.0 GHz, Neoverse N1)   | 7nm TSMC    | July 2022    |
| Axion | ARMv9.0-A (Neoverse V2)   | TSMC    | Apr. 2024    |

# Apple, State-of-the-art

From the ARM Instruction Set and Manufacturing technology, Apple adopts the latest technology in the world. The clock speed of Apple Silicon is unbelievable.

Is it real?

In MacOS, "sudo powermetrics" can see the System Information. From the log, CPU speed is adaptive on workload. In Apple Silicon, there are two type of CPUs. E-Cluster and P-Cluster. E means "efficiency" and P means "Performance".

```bash
**** Processor usage ****

E-Cluster HW active frequency: 999 MHz
CPU 0 frequency: 1113 MHz
CPU 1 frequency: 1079 MHz
CPU 2 frequency: 1082 MHz
CPU 3 frequency: 1132 MHz

P-Cluster HW active frequency: 711 MHz
CPU 4 frequency: 2249 MHz
CPU 5 frequency: 2137 MHz
CPU 6 frequency: 3058 MHz
CPU 7 frequency: 2624 MHz
```


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/pgzramfhb27wcm8ri68t.png)

# What is Neoverse?

Neoverse is an ARM CPU architecture for server-class for datacenter, edge-computing, and high-performance computing.


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ryxfaqkvy39h6w0h1gwb.png)

## Neoverse V2 CPU


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/9yu4ruvwb6o5zsm85ujr.png)


# Who design custom ARM CPU?

AWS and Google has their own ARM CPU, Graviton, Ampere and Axion.

### Annapururna Labs

Amazon acquires Annapururna Labs, an Israeli microelectronics company in January 2015. Annapururna Labs launched AWS Nitro hardware, Graviton, Trainium, and Inferentia.

### Ampere Computing

Google Cloud and Azure uses Ampere Altra ARM CPU, which is designed by Ampere Computing LLC.

Ampere Computing is an American fabless semiconductor company founded in 2017. Renne James is CEO, ex-President of Intel.

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/zhbqdm1salcp1mh9l8zl.png)

### Google Silicon

Google also has their own Silicon design team, they launched Tensor Processing Units in 2015. Google's first ARM-based CPU is Axion

# Intel's alien moved to ARM

Intel has been an indispensable company in CPU design, there were rumors that Intel CPUs were designed by aliens. Now that alien moved to ARM!


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tc2hukq3q7uoz3yir9ji.png)


### Intel Corp Stock Market

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/mv1now6eam7tulxw0k4e.png)

### ARM Stock Market


![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/3swpus7oz3rjqywd65th.png)


# Develop in Macbook Apple Silicon, Launch ARM Kubernetes.