Cloud Computing continues to heat up as we approach the 2010 Summer Solstice. One of the forces seeding Cloud Computing is the exponential growth of online information. With 1.8 billion Internet users worldwide and a mind boggling 10 billion Google searches a month in the USA, it really feels like the “Intergalactic Computer Network” that J.C.R. “Lick” Licklider and his colleagues envisioned in the 1960’s is becoming a reality. However, even the leading-edge hyper scale data centers of cloud providers are finding all this data overwhelming. Check out the following video to better understand this data tsunami.

The explosion of digital data is fundamentally changing the dynamics of how servers are built, bought and deployed. The days of just throwing “raw” performance at the problem are long gone and the era of efficient computing with servers that balance price, performance and power is officially upon us. AMD’s answer to this challenge – the AMD Opteron™ 4000 and 6000 Series platforms.  We will be showcasing our newest server technology the week of the Summer Solstice at GigaOM Structure 2010 and the Red Hat Summit 2010, two conferences focused squarely on driving cloud computing and related technologies.

GigaOM Structure 2010, held in San Francisco June 23 and 24, is a gathering of the who’s who of cloud computing -  including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Rackspace, Saleforce.com, VMware, Yahoo –  and of course AMD, a Primetime sponsor of the event. You might remember at the GigaOM Structure conference last year Jonathan Heiliger of Facebook expressed his disappointment in current processor and server technology during a Fireside Chat with Om Malik. His concerns centered on not being able to achieve the advertised performance of the latest processor technology and the levels of power consumption of servers. We are anxious to hear from Facebook and other major Cloud Computing providers at GigaOM Structure 2010 to see how they are judging the most recent releases of AMD-based server hardware.

This year Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM will host a chat with Rick Bergman, AMD Senior VP, on the evolution of x86 for the Cloud. They will discuss how AMD is developing products that leverage GPU and x86 CPU capabilities. This fusion of CPU and GPU technology is a hot topic with AMD – Rick just gave the first public demo of Fusion APU technology for client PCs at Computex, and my colleague, John Fruehe, just published a blog “Fusion for Servers” which provides some insights on the server end of this topic.

AMD will also host a workshop at GigaOM Structure 2010, “Does Your Cloud Cluster go to 11,” exploring some of the challenges faced when building a power-efficient, scale out computing environment. We will also be showcasing the AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform as an optimal solution for cloud computing.

Red Hat Summit 2010, held in Boston June 22 – 25, is a gathering place for the Open Source Software community.  Topics covered will include cloud computing, platform, virtualization, middleware, and management technologies. AMD is a silver sponsor of this event and will host a session that will discuss the twelve-core AMD Opteron™ 6100 Processor (formally known under the code name “Magny-Cours”) architecture as well as a Cloud Computing Campground session. AMD is an active contributor to the Linux Operating System, the Xen virtual machine monitor, and the KVM virtualization solution for Linux.

In fact, AMD has recently become a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation as highlighted in a blog by my colleague John Fritz.

You can get more information about how AMD technology is driving Cloud Computing on our home page.  Or, if you are attending either of these conferences, make sure you visit the AMD booth and talk to us about your thoughts on cloud computing. If you are staying at home – be a part of the digital data explosion and post a comment to this blog.

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her 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.