Recently, Paul Muehr and I had the opportunity to film a video discussing the recently released AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform and a new cloud computing server using this platform. Check out the video below or on AMD’s YouTube channel.

As we discuss in the video, there are four major enhancements to the AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform which significantly lower server power consumption:

1. The AMD Opteron™ 4100 EE Series of processors are the lowest power AMD Opteron processors ever. These processors are rated at 32W ACP, which is 20% lower than AMD’s previous generation 2400 EE Series processors.
2. AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processors support 1.35V DDR3 memory, enabling lower server power consumption at load.
3. The AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform uses low-power chipsets. The SR5650 has a maximum TDP of only 13 watts.
4. AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processors include new AMD-P power management features, including C1E. C1E is a feature that helps reduce the power consumption of the AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processor’s integrated memory controller and HyperTransport™ technology links.

1.35V DDR3 memory, low-power chipsets, and C1E are available in servers using any AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series processor and are also available in servers using any AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor.

ZT Systems was able to leverage these platform enhancements to design the ZT Systems 1253Ra Datacenter Server that we discuss in the video. This server is now the world’s lowest power 2P server¹! And not by a small margin. The two lowest power Intel Xeon processor-based servers consume 28% more and 34% more power than the ZT Systems 1253Ra Datacenter Server¹:

This power consumption advantage can translate into annual operating expense savings of more than $100 per server per year². Considering that the latest comparisons show that the largest web hosting companies own up to 70 thousand servers, this power consumption advantage can help reduce operating costs by up to $7 million per year².

What do you think – does the AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform offer compelling advances in power efficiency and performance-per-watt? We’d love to hear your input in the comments section below.

Andy Parma is a Product Marketing Manager 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.

¹SPEC and SPECpower_ssj are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. The results above reflect results published on www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/ as of July 21, 2010. The comparison presented above is based on two-socket servers with the lowest power consumption at 100% of target load. For the latest SPECpower_ssj™2008 results, visit www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/.

Configuration Information:

2 x AMD Opteron™ processors Model 4164 EE in ZT Systems 1253Ra Datacenter server, 16GB (4x4GB  DDR3-1333 1.35V) memory, 128GB  Western Digital SSD, Emacs V1E-5250V power supply, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition 64-bit

http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/res2010q2/power_ssj2008-20100601-00265.html

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model L5430 in Powerleader PR2510D2 server, 8GB (2x4GB DDR2-667) memory, 250GB Western Digital SATA disk drive, Powerleader 10500038 EFAP-S502 power supply, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition SP1

http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/res2008q4/power_ssj2008-20081007-00086.html

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model L5520 in Plat’Home Cloud Station E server, 8GB (4x2GB DDR3-1333) memory, 32GB SATA SSD, 3Y Power Technology YM-2451C power supply, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise x64 Edition SP2

http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/res2009q3/power_ssj2008-20090721-00178.html

²Based on an estimated annual operating expense of $2.41 per watt. A 43W per server reduction in power consumption would result in an estimated annual operating expense savings of $103.63. A 43W per server reduction in power consumption on 70,000 servers would result in a 3,010,000 watt reduction in total power consumption and an estimated annual operating expense savings of $7,254,100. 1W per server saved “at the wall” translates to 2.5W saved overall. SOURCE: IDC / Worldwide Server Energy Expense 2009-2013 Forecast (IDC#221346). $0.11 per kWh ($0.0011 per Wh) price of electricity assumed. 1W “at the wall” x 2.5 x 8766 hours per year x $0.0011 = $2.41 annual savings from 1W reduction in server power consumption.