Back in high school I played on an intramural soccer team.  Our crowning achievement was not our win record, but the fact that we once fit 9 players into Mark’s 1982 Camaro.  Not a small feat.

I am reminded of this when I see the new Boston Quattro 6000GP server.  In the world of density, this product really stands out. Based on our new six-core AMD Opteron™ processor codenamed “Istanbul,” this new server manages to squeeze a total of four discrete servers into a 2U chassis. The Quattro 6000GP has four separate system boards, giving customers four individual servers that can each operate independently, all within one chassis.

If you are running a very dense data center, perhaps HPC applications or cloud applications, then a system with this type of density can help you better manage your environment.

With four dual-socket system boards, you can install up to 8 total processors, or (with the new 6-core processors) have up to 48 total cores in a 2U space.  Multiply that by the 21 slots in a standard 42U rack, and you have over 1000 cores in a 6 square foot space in your data center.

PCPro was impressed enough to give the Quattro 6000GP the PCPro Recommended award in recognition of the outstanding features and capabilities of this server.

In talking to customers, I’ve been told that data center density is often an issue, because data centers tend to be the most expensive floor space in the company. With special security, power, cooling and fire control, the cost of floor space in the data center is often not only the most expensive, but also the most difficult to expand when you need more room.

Greater density means better use of data center floor space, and the new six-core “Istanbul” processors can help customers to reach new levels of threads per square foot. In the Quattro 6000 GP, the compute nodes aren’t consuming all of the space in the server, however.  There is still room for twelve SATA hard drives, giving you up to 12TB of storage, up to 3TB per server. Featuring green WD SATA hard drives, the system is designed to be energy conscious because Boston knows that you’ll be looking for maximum density.

Every time we drop in on Boston Limited, they always have something interesting up their sleeve, and the new Quattro 6000GP is a great showcase for the dramatic core density of Istanbul. Whether you have HPC, web, cloud or are facing density challenges in the data center, this is a new emerging form factor that is worth a look.

 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.