Investigating Cavium's ThunderX: The First ARM Server SoC With Ambition

Today we're taking a look at Cavium's ThunderX, a highly integrated ARMv8 server SoC with 48 cores and lots of I/O. With the ThunderX, Cavium is looking to challenge Intel and their market-dominating Xeon lineup. Meanwhile Intel hasn't been standing still and has further improved the Xeon D line. To that end we've put Cavium's new server SoC to the test and compare it against the latest and greatest twelve and sixteen core Xeon Ds.  And we also got a hold of the new Xeon E5-2640 v4 which holds the promise of being a SKU with an excellent balance between performance and power.

Can the ThunderX compete with the best Intel SKUs? Let's find out!