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This is the final chapter of my blog looking back on the first year of the AMD Opteron^TM processor.

If you’re a fan of professional sports, you know that the stretch from April until the end of June is draft time for the big four North American leagues -- NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. Inevitably during these months, the sports media revisit past drafts and look at some of the biggest draft busts and successes. Take an example from the NFL -- Ryan Leaf (2^nd pick, 1^st round, 1998) and Tom Brady (199^th pick, 6^th round 2000) -- epitomize the concepts of bust (Leaf) and boom (Brady.)

Contrast this to the world of microprocessors. The AMD Opteron processor entered the market in April 2003 as a solid, but unproven, option during a time when the industry had been trying to determine if the 64-bit Itanium processor was more hype than substance.

I noted in my first blog that the AMD Opteron processor was met with some skepticism early on due to a lack of initial OEM support. But by the first half of 2004, the AMD Opteron processor was well on its way to being the dark-horse in x86 servers. Sun began to launch the servers it announced late in 2003 and the market was seeing some impressive performance on those systems. In February, the competition did us a big favor when they validated our approach to 64-bit computing by emulating the AMD64 instruction set extensions. In fact, it kicked off the first of several instances in that period where the competition took a page from the AMD playbook (multi-core, processor model numbers and Direct Connect Architecture are just a few more examples of them following the AMD lead.) The competition announcing its plans to incorporate AMD64 extensions served notice to the industry that AMD was ahead of the curve in understanding the needs of enterprise customers.

We had fun at IDF in Feb. 2004 reminding the world who made 64-bit migration easy.

A big helping of “Swordfish”

In the first few months of 2004, the momentum behind the AMD Opteron processor was fast and furious. The teams that supported the AMD Opteron processor were extremely busy but no one was complaining. We all had a lot of sweat equity invested in the AMD Opteron processor and we were now seeing the payoff. While IDF was going on, several of us were working on a project code-name “Swordfish”. “Swordfish” was the codename for our upcoming server launch with HP and it represented probably the biggest milestone for the AMD Opteron processor. Here’s why;

• Most industry watchers assumed HP would probably be the least likely OEM to come on board because of their investment in Itanium;
• HP didn’t make a small commitment to AMD, much like Sun, they went big right out of the gate;
• As the industry-leader, HP’s broad portfolio of AMD servers helped drive the discussion away from AMD being seen as a niche player in HPC;
• HP had a huge footprint among Wall Street IT, which was a critical customer segment for AMD in order to increase our market share.

Slide from HP's launch presentation on February 24, 2004

Rookie of the Year

In April 2004, we went back to NYC to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of the AMD Opteron processor. While our event didn’t quite have the production value that our launch did a year earlier, we opted to go for substance over style. What a stark contrast from a year earlier. IBM was of course back again but joined this time by our new friends from Sun and HP along with an end-user from Verisign.

We had our cake, and ate it too at the AMD Opteron one-year anniversary celebration in NYC

One final thought: at its launch in April 2003, the AMD Opteron processor delivered some unique innovations to an x86 server market hungry for choice. The AMD Opteron processor initially fell into that category of a draft pick that had loads of potential, but not quite a first rounder yet. However, looking back at some of the milestones AMD achieved with the AMD Opteron processor from April 2003 to April 2004, it probably was a clear-cut “Rookie of the Year,” in the x86 server business. Particularly if you read some of the following….

“AMD is viewed as a credible tier-one server processor supplier, which certainly wasn’t the case a year ago,” said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. InfoWorld, April 19, 2004

The Opteron processor has vaulted AMD to the front lines of the competition between IBM, HP and Sun Microsystems--three of the top four server makers. CNET, April 19, 2004

Since introducing the 64-bit processor a year ago Thursday, AMD has been granted new access to the major server makers, seen its red ink turn to black and even managed to get powerful Intel to rethink its own product plans. CNET, February 22, 2004

Weiss said Gartner believes that HP’s embrace of Opteron in particular has created the most waves throughout the server industry, by forcing IBM to broaden its commitment to Opteron, and forcing Dell to take another look at the technology. But most of all, it has forced Intel to play its hand regarding its CT technology, which, like Opteron, is a 32-bit processor with 64-bit extensions. Internet News, February 22, 2004

Overall, AMD shattered industry expectations for Opteron’s first year. The fact that the company’s product is even discussed as a serious Intel alternative in the server market is a major accomplishment. The Register, April 23, 2004

There you have it, some great quotes that sum up the first year of AMD Opteron. Perhaps in another year or two, you will see another blog from me about the first year of our Six-Core AMD Opteron processor, also known as “Istanbul”. Thanks for reading.

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.