Arm’ing for the future of IT – it’s not just a slice of Raspberry Pi

First, let’s chat about Oracle Linux on advanced RISC machines, more commonly known as Arm CPUs. This newer architecture has many advantages over the older x86_64 architecture that Intel and AMD use. This includes lower power consumption; lower latency, enabling better performance; and a simplified architecture that enables higher-density systems. Leveraging Oracle Linux on an Arm system is a popular option for both cloud-scale operators such as Oracle and Microsoft as well as smaller organizations that are looking at reducing their compute power and cooling needs.

Having a single enterprise OS on all Linux systems has several advantages, such as using the same tools across all servers and access to the same commercial support for your systems. The use cases for Arm in your inventory of servers are also interesting. As a whole, Arm processors offer a lower cost due to their higher potential core density and lower power consumption. In the enterprise space, Ampere dominates and offers Arm processors with as many as 128 cores on a single chip in a single rack unit (RU) of space.

Performance is not lacking either, with each processor supporting up to 128 Arm cores in two RUs of space with high CPU speeds of up to 3.0 GHz frequency per core. The I/O is also powerful, with 128 lanes of high-speed PCIe Gen4 and 8×72 ECC-protected DDR4 3200 memory. With 64 GB Dual In-Line Memory Modules (DIMMs), that’s 4 terabytes of RAM in a small form factor! These are enterprise-grade systems, with all the power, security, and reliability of Oracle Linux.

Arm is not just for data centers; when you need a small system, such as a DNS server or a remote access device, there is the famous Raspberry Pi, which works well with it’s small size for tucking it away in a wiring closet for a backup DNS server or inside an Oracle Exadata cabinet to enable remote access. You can even use a Raspberry Pi as a monitoring system or a web server in a DMZ.

Regardless of what Arm platform you are running on (Ampere or Raspberry Pi), when running Oracle Linux, you also get access to UEK with its enhancements, including tools such as Ansible. Oracle Linux includes all the major technologies at one low price for support, and you always have the option of using it for free; you can even patch for free. As far as Arm goes, the platform is also not limited. You have commercial software such as MySQL 8.0 available to you, as well as a large amount of open source software.

It’s not just the Raspberry Pi use cases that are powerful. When you get to the larger Arm-based services, you open up a huge number of use cases for edge computing. Edge computing needs the application to bring data from the cloud into the locations that need low-latency access to the data. With MySQL 8.0 replication features, you can easily replicate data from the cloud to the edge, maintaining performance while, at the same time, leveraging the high core counts and low-power requirements of Arm systems made by companies such as Ampere, which offers an 80-core CPU with a low 210w of power consumption. The high core counts combined with container technologies such as Docker and Kata containers enable a distributed microservices architecture, with centrally maintained applications that take advantage of the cloud’s automation but still provide the performance of a traditional on-premises solution. This is the future of IT.