On Tuesday, Ampere Computing expanded its AmpereOne lineup by introducing six new AmpereOne M processors without much official press coverage or any news. The M-series chips employ a 7228-pin FCLGA socket and house between 96 and 192 single-threaded Armv8.6 plus cores operating at up to 3.60 GHz. Each core includes 2 MB of L2 cache, while a shared 64 MB system cache feeds both compute units and memory controllers. Unlike its predecessors, the new family features a 12-channel DDR5-5600 memory subsystem that supports one ECC-protected DIMM per channel and up to 3 TB of RAM. This design aims to meet the growing demands of cloud and AI workloads that rely heavily on large in-memory processing. Power consumption ranges from 239 W in entry-level models up to 348 W in the flagship A192-32M, which delivers 192 cores at 3.2 GHz. All variants incorporate dynamic voltage and frequency scaling and adaptive voltage control to regulate power draw and maintain efficiency.

On the I/O side, the processors provide 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes with flexible bifurcation options and offer 24 dedicated device controllers to connect accelerators, NVMe storage, and high-speed network adapters. While AMD's EPYC 9965 delivers similar core counts, simultaneous multithreading, and a mature x86-64 ecosystem, Ampere's focus is on memory capacity and bandwidth. By releasing the AmpereOne M series with minimal news coverage, Ampere appears to be laying the groundwork for its next-generation AmpereOne MX platform, which is expected to feature 256 cores, the same 12-channel DDR5 architecture, and a shift to TSMC's 3 nm process. According to Ampere, shipments of the M series began in the fourth quarter of 2024. Softbank, which acquired Ampere Computing in March of this year, is paying $6.5 billion in an all-cash transaction and wants to grab a piece of the enterprise AI deployments. And with CSPs requiring more cores and more bandwidth, Ampere is on the right track.