You’d think being here in Austin, we’d be playing Texas Hold ‘Em, but with our recent announcement, it’s clear that Hi-Lo is the winning game.

Take a look at the server market today; 70% of the volume is in the dual socket space[i].  And it’s growing. Willie Sutton was once quoted (incorrectly) with saying that he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is at.” So why are we driving so hard in the two socket space?  Because that’s where the volume is at.  And you can quote me, correctly, on that one.

With our recent server roadmap update announcement, we are introducing the world to a new strategy for addressing the 2P market – G34 platforms on the high end, and C32 on the low end.  Hi-low.  It’s a big enough market that you would have to be crazy to think that it can’t be addressed by two different platforms.  Two different platforms that are more the same than fraternal twins, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Think for a moment about where the 2P market is going. In the past few years we have been adding more cores, more expandability and more RAS features to our products – because customers have been demanding it for virtualization and other resource-hungry applications. But at the same time, a new class of application need is being driven by the low end.  Cloud computing, the growth of SMB applications and sprawling network infrastructure are creating a demand for lower power and lower priced, reliable servers.  The same density and business needs that drove AMD to add the AMD Opteron™ EE processors to our product line are driving a new platform that we expect will give you everything you need for most applications, but at a low cost, with very low power consumption.

G34 platforms, under the platform name of “Maranello”, are designed for expandability and performance. We plan to offer four memory channels per socket and 8 or 12 core processors perfectly suited to handle the most demanding 2P environments.  As an added bonus, these processors and platforms are expected to be able to scale easily to 4P. No longer will you have different models to choose from (2000 or 8000), we expect the new G34 processors to be able to easily handle both markets, simplifying the lives of those building servers as well as those maintaining servers.

C32 platforms, which we plan to bring to market under the platform name “San Marino”, are designed for the needs of the other half of the stack.  Scaling 1P and 2P solutions, the two memory channels and 4 or 6 cores are planned to perfectly match the hundreds of thousands of applications where 12 cores and 4 memory channels may be overkill.  Especially when it comes to electricity.  These processors sip electricity, they don’t gulp it.  They deliver the right level of performance for small/medium businesses, for cloud environments, and for network infrastructure needs. By utilizing a simple design, with fewer memory channels, AMD expects to deliver a relatively lower infrastructure cost.  And with planned power envelopes below the total range of current AMD Opteron processors, we expect that fewer fans, smaller heatsinks and smaller power supplies can help you achieve greater energy efficiency, lower noise, and of course lower cost.

So what about that twins comment?  What do these processors have in common?  Plenty.  They are expected to utilize the same core.  The same chipset design.  The same BIOS base.  We expect the C32 designs to be able to span 1P to 2P and G34 to span 2P to 4P.  They overlap is at that “meat of the market” intersection where the highest volumes live, for plenty of coverage in all directions. We expect that as a system designer, it will be a trivial feat to take a C32 design and change it to G34.  More commonality across a vendor’s products is a good thing.  As a customer this can help you drive down your long term cost of management.

Of course the question “so, you’re abandoning the 1P and 4P space” naturally comes up.  Nothing is further from the truth.  The C32 is expected to allow for a much more flexible 1P.  Low cost and simplicity to meet the needs of the 1P market, but with scale up capabilities to take it to 2P. Think of it as 1P on steroids (the good kind, not the baseball kind).

And 4P?  What can help turn the tide in a market that is slowly being encroached by 2P?  How about a platform that combines the best of both and allows a company to deliver a low-cost entry-level 4P server?  Talk about breathing new life into a market that sorely needs to adjust to the new realities of business in the post Y2K work. The time is right for this hybrid approach.

We’re very excited about how we plan to help our technology partners bring these new designs to market.  Without naming names, let’s just say that there is a renewed enthusiasm amongst our industry partners who have made comments about this truly being “game changing.” One even likened this strategy to the launch of the original AMD Opteron processor, an event arguably that did more to change the dynamics of the x86 server market than anything else.

We’ve laid our cards on the table now, and it it’s clear that in 2010, we expect AMD to be holding the winning hand. Let the games begin.

John Fruehe is the Director of Business Development for Server/Workstation products 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.