Yesterday we launched our latest energy-sipping server processor, the 40-watt ACP, Six-Core AMD Opteron™ EE processor.  For those of you scoring at home, 40W ACP / 6 cores = ~6.67W per core.

In case you didn’t have time to read the enormous volume of coverage from Yesterday’s news, we at AMD’s Global PR headquarters here in Austin, TX are happy to provide you with the following summary:

“The new chip is part of AMD’s six-core Opteron family of processors. Much larger competitor Intel Corp also has low-power chips, but its most advanced chips only have four cores. More cores allow a chip to perform more tasks at once.” Reuters

The company was way ahead of the curve when it came to delivering low-voltage, low-frequency parts that had the same feature set as the standard x64 chips it sold, but for complicated reasons, server makers and customers were not quite ready to sacrifice raw performance for the kinds of performance per watt that the so-called Opteron Energy Efficient (EE) chips could deliver. The Register

Blogger’s note: Some of you may remember back in 2004 we brought to market a single-core, max TDP 30-watt processor. Very much ahead of the curve as the article suggests.

Another key difference is the memory used. Intel uses the more expensive DDR3 memory, Kirby said. AMD currently uses DDR2, arguing that DDR3 is still not mainstream enough and too costly, he said. Memory is a key need in such environments as cloud computing, and cost is an important factor, Kirby said. AMD will make the switch to DDR3 next year, when the cost goes down. eWeek

Here’s some additional info on DDR2 vs. DDR3 memory pricing for servers. Latest data shows customers still need to pay a premium for DDR3.

“With more cores, you have more headroom for those peaky times…to support a heavy amount of Web hits, if you will,” Kerby said. “The most concerning area is power consumption, being down in the the 40-watt power band, and not extending above the power threshold.” The bottom line? More computing power in a given rack (or higher compute density) while maintaining a low 40-watt power band, Kerby said. PC Magazine

“Intel has 40-watt processors as well. However, Intel made sacrifices in performance and functionality to achieve the lower power consumption. The Intel Xeon L5506 processors have reduced memory and bus speed, and do not include Intel’s HyperThreading or TurboBoost capabilities. By contrast, the AMD ‘Istanbul’ is able to deliver reach the 40-watt goal while retaining high memory speed, and the AMD-P (power management) and AMD-V (virtualization) functionality. Servers built on the AMD ‘Istanbul’ can also use DDR2 memory which is cheaper than the DDR3 memory required by the Intel CPU.” PC World

Here's a chart that shows how AMD does not compromise features in order to save power

 

Semiconductor analyst Nathan Brookwood, research fellow with Insight 64, agrees that there is room for all kinds of CPU clock speeds and power draws. “Not everybody is running all their processors at 100 percent all the time. Having a 40 watt part for people who care more about power than performance certainly makes some sense,” InternetNews.com

“Advanced Micro Devices is also hoping to appeal to cost-conscious data center managers with a new line of low-power, six-core “Istanbul” Opteron CPUs. The 40-watt models join the 75- and 55-watt versions already on the market.” Good Morning Silicon Valley

The above doesn’t even include the 100+ tweets and counting I’ve already seen on this since yesterday. Only a few of the tweets are from me. So yes, people other than me are tweeting about this amazing engineering and manufacturing feat that is the 40-watt ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron EE processor.

Phil Hughes is a senior public relations manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.