NVIDIA Vera CPU Beats 128-Core X86 By 1.5x In Phoronix Tests

NVIDIA published a report on Vera CPU benchmarks, done by Phoronix. Compares Vera directly against a current 128-core x86 CPU and claims a 1.5x overall performance advantage Compared with the prior-generation NVIDIA Grace CPU, Vera delivered a 1.6x geometric mean increase in Phoronix’s testing. Vera delivered over 4x the memory bandwidth per core compared with traditional x86 CPUs. Vera delivers 1.2TB/s bandwidth using LPDDR5X, while keeping memory power under 30W, compared with more than 100W for many DDR5 server setups. ---- To note, Vera uses Armv9.2, not x86, so NVIDIA is basically saying that their Arm-based CPU can beat the usual Intel and AMD server CPUs. For agentic AI, this CPU-side work becomes much heavier because the AI is not only generating text, but also calling tools, reading files, writing code, using browsers, running sandboxes, and managing workflows.