HIGHLY ANTICIPATED: Primarily known for its GPUs and more recently AI infrastructure, Nvidia is set to enter the mainstream CPU market with its Arm-based Vera platform later this year. The company claims Vera delivers significant performance gains over its earlier Grace processors and x86 chips from AMD and Intel. While early tests from Phoronix show encouraging results, Nvidia is still withholding crucial details.
Michael Larabel from Phoronix recently called Nvidia's Vera datacenter CPU the fastest Arm Linux processor he has tested in the outlet's 22-year history. However, since he conducted the benchmarks in a controlled environment at the company's Santa Clara headquarters, the results can hardly be considered definitive.
Most synthetic tests place Vera well ahead of Nvidia's previous Grace CPU and Intel's Xeon server chips, but the competition with AMD's Epyc processors appears much tighter. While Vera clearly outperforms most of Team Red's lineup, AMD's top Epyc models, the 9755 and 975F, trade blows with it. Vera's biggest advantages appear in certain streaming and 7-Zip compression workloads.
However, the one-day comparison was limited to Intel's Xeon 6980P CPUs and a handful of AMD Epyc models, with no AmpereOne review units available. Crucially, other Arm-based CPUs from Apple and Qualcomm were also absent.
