Alibaba’s Yitian 710 processor emerges as the top performer
Alibaba Cloud’s Yitian 710 processor has taken the lead in the server CPU market, outperforming competitors from major tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and AWS. Based on Arm architecture, the Yitian 710 has been hailed as the most efficient processor for database tasks in hyperscale cloud environments, according to a recent study published in the Transactions on Cloud Computing journal by IEEE.
The research, conducted by research assistant professor Dumitrel Loghin from the National University of Singapore, compared the performance of various Arm-powered server CPUs, including the Yitian 710, against Intel’s x86 Xeon Platinum 8488C processor. The study found that the Yitian 710 not only surpassed other Arm-based chips but also outshined Intel’s Xeon Platinum processor in specific database tasks in the cloud environment.
Key industry players such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform have already adopted 64-bit Arm CPUs in their cloud infrastructure. The Yitian 710, along with other Arm-based processors like AWS’s Graviton3, have shown remarkable performance in synthetic benchmarks, establishing themselves as potential rivals to Intel’s Xeon CPUs.
Despite its victory in database tasks, the Yitian 710 faced challenges in certain workloads such as Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Machine Learning inference, and blockchain applications. This was attributed to factors like unoptimized software, lower clock frequency, and subpar core level performance.
While Arm-based servers may spend more time in Linux kernel system calls compared to Xeon servers, they are considered to have great potential, especially due to their lower cloud computing costs. The Yitian 710, in particular, boasts advantages such as utilizing a newer version of the Arm ISA and speedy DDR5 RAM which some rival CPUs lack support for.
Interested readers can find the full set of benchmarks in a report by The Register, which further emphasizes that despite some limitations, Arm-based servers could be a cost-effective option when top-tier performance is not a critical requirement.
