ThunderX® ARM Processors

The ThunderX® product family provides the best-in-class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance. With high-performance custom cores, single- and dual-socket configurations, very high memory bandwidth, large memory capacity, integrated hardware accelerators, fully virtualized core and IO, scalable Ethernet fabric and feature rich I/Os that enable best in class performance/$ and performance/watt. The ThunderX family includes multiple Workload Optimized™ SKUs that enable servers & appliances that are optimized for compute, storage, network and secure compute workloads in the cloud. The ThunderX processor family is fully compliant with ARMv8 architecture specifications as well as ARM’s SBSA.
This product family is based on highly efficient full custom processor cores designed by Cavium™ in 28nm process technology under architectural license from ARM. It is fully compliant with ARMv8 architecture as well as ARM’s Server Base System Architecture (SBSA) standard while bringing to market dramatic enhancements that include:
- The first ARM based SoC that scales up to 48 cores with up to 2.5 GHz core frequency
- The first ARM based SoC to be fully cache coherent across dual sockets using Cavium Coherent Processor Interconnect (CCPI™)
- The largest integrated I/O capacity with 100s of Gigabits of I/O bandwidth
- Four DDR3/4 72 bit memory controllers capable of supporting 2400 MHz memories with 1TB of memory in a dual socket configuration
- Hundreds of integrated hardware accelerators for security, storage, networking and virtualization applications.
- Standard based low latency Ethernet fabric interconnecting thousands of ThunderX nodes in 2D and 3D configurations and enabling fabric monitoring and SLA enforcements with awareness and policy enforcement for virtualized networks.
- Virtualization everywhere with Cavium virtSOC™ technology – Full system level low latency virtualization solution from core to I/O.
- Best-in-class performance per watt and performance per dollar for the target applications
ThunderX Family Details:
With ThunderX, Cavium will be delivering the most comprehensive family of integrated ARMv8 SoC products in the industry and for the first time data center and cloud operators can truly optimize their deployments and workloads from the silicon all the way to the application.
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ThunderX_CP™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated vSoC, multiple 10/40 GbE and high memory bandwidth. This family is optimized for private and public cloud web servers and content delivery, web caching and social media data analytics workloads.
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ThunderX_ST™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated vSoC, multiple SATAv3 controllers, 10/40 GbE & PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency, and scalable fabric for east-west as well as north-south traffic connectivity. This family includes hardware accelerators for data protection/ integrity/security, user to user efficient data movement (RoCE) and compressed storage. This family is optimized for Hadoop, block & object storage, distributed file storage and hot/warm/cold storage type workloads.
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ThunderX_SC™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated vSoC, 10/40 GbE connectivity, multiple PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency. The hardware accelerators include Cavium’s industry leading 4th generation NITROX technology with acceleration for IPSec, SSL, Anti-virus, Anti-malware, firewall and DPI. This family is optimized for Secure Web frontend, security appliances and Cloud RAN type workloads.
- ThunderX_NT™: Up to 48 highly efficient cores along with integrated vSoC, 10/40/100 GbE connectivity, multiple PCIe Gen3 ports, high memory bandwidth, dual socket coherency, and scalable fabric with feature rich capabilities for bandwidth provisioning , QoS, traffic Shaping and tunnel termination. The hardware accelerators include high packet throughput processing, network virtualization and data monitoring. This family is optimized for media servers, scale-out embedded application and NFV type workloads.
ThunderX Customer Reference Platforms: Cavium is enabling ThunderX family with two reference platforms (ThunderX 1K and ThunderX 2K), which are intended for eco-system partners to test and release with actual hardware, enabling customers to evaluate ThunderX performance and features based on their specific application. These reference platforms would also accelerate the development cycle for those customers, who are building their own platforms and developing their software stack deploying ThunderX. These reference platforms would overall accelerate the ARM server adoption in the cloud and data center infrastructure.
ThunderX 1K reference platform is an ATX form factor single socket motherboard inside of a 1U chassis.
ThunderX 2K reference platform is a ½ SSI form factor sled inside of a 2U chassis. The 2U chassis can accommodate 4 of such sled and each of the sled being a dual socket design.
ThunderX CN87XX Family
The CN87XX consists of 8-16 cores in single socket configuration with two DDR3/4 controllers, multiple 10GbE, SATAv3 and PCIe Gen3 interfaces. This family is cost and power optimized for entry level applications such as cold storage, distributed content delivery, dedicated hosting, distributed memory caching and embedded and control plane.
ThunderX family consists of two products named CN88xx and CN87xx. Summary of key capabilities are the following:
Features | CN88XX_X (Server) | CN87XX_X (Low End Server) |
Cores |
24-48 | 8-16 |
Core Frequency | Up to 2.5Ghz | Up to 2.5GHz |
Dual Socket Configuration | ![]() |
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Full Virtualization (virtSoC™) | ![]() |
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Multiple PCIe Gen3 | ![]() |
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Multiple SATA 3 | ![]() |
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Multiple 10G/40GE | ![]() |
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100G Connectivity | ![]() |
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Multiple DDR3/4 | ![]() |
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Hardware Accelerators | ![]() |
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Ethernet Fabric | ![]() |
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Product Information
Segment | ThunderX Family SKU | Example Workload |
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Compute | ThunderX_CP | Private/Public Cloud web servers & content delivery, web caching, social media data analytics |
Storage | ThunderX_ST | Hadoop block & object storage, distributed file storage, hot/warm/cold storage appliances |
Networking | ThunderX_NT | Media Servers, scale-out embedded applications, NFV appliances |
Secure Compute | ThunderX_SC | Secure Web frontend, security appliances, C-RAN |

The ThunderX product family is the best-in-class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance.
The ThunderX_CP product family is the best in class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance.
The ThunderX_ST product family is the best in class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Storage Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance.
The ThunderX_SC product family is the best in class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Secure Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance.
The ThunderX_NT product family is the best in class 64-bit ARMv8 Data Center & Cloud Processors, offering unprecedented level of integration and industry leading SoC performance.
1U/1S Reference Platform (StratusX) (CN8800-1S-CDK) Product Brief
2U/4N (½ SSI) - CirrusX Reference Platform (CN8800-2S-CDK) Product Brief
Cavium and Western Digital set out to prove the value of a new cloud service provider (CSP) distributed storage platform that is price per performance competitive with current distributed storage platforms.
Content delivery is pervasive in our modern web and app driven world. Photos, graphics, animations (now including emoticons), audio, and video—all forms of "digital assets."
Dynamic web pages are as old as the World Wide Web ("the Web"). MySQL is an open source web database management system for storing dynamic website content.
One of the truly underrated pieces of modern web architecture is the ability to dedicate servers to accelerate the delivery of digital content from all sorts of sources—Web pages, audio, video and even raw database queries.
Cavium launches the world's fastest ARM Processor in their family of workload optimized ThunderX ARM Server Processors (including ThunderX_CP for Cloud, ThunderX_ST for Storage, ThunderX_SC for Security and ThunderX_NT for Networking), for a range of applications in the cloud and data center.
Cavium's ThunderX 48-core ARMv8 64bit SoC is being implemented in dozens of ARM Server designs, by partners as Pegatron, Asus, Mitac, Gigabyte, Wiwynn, Acer and even for for super computing by E4 and Cray.