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Energy Efficiency Globally Must Start Locally
Posted by Guest Blogger in 2:02 pm
(3 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
Loading ...New York State is currently facing some difficult challenges including rising energy prices, an aging electricity delivery infrastructure, an imbalanced electricity generation portfolio and climate change. According to a 2007 EPA study conducted by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and sponsored by AMD, New York’s data centers – home to second largest concentration of data centers in the country – consume an average 4.5 billion kilowatt hours a year. This is the equivalent of nearly 700,000 single family homes with a year’s supply of electricity — at a cost of roughly $594 million. To meet these challenges, energy efficiency must play a central role in reducing consumption and improving reliability.
With that in mind, NYSERDA, AMD, New York State, HP and GLOBALFOUNDRIES have all come together to address these issues head on, discussing them at the latest NY State Performance Computing Seminar on October 28.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), in collaboration with AMD, have been instrumental in driving sustainable computing and business practices in New York. Improvements in operating practices, coupled with installation of energy efficient systems, can enable significant energy savings and help reduce the strain information technology and data centers place on the electric grid while helping to ensure a reliable and affordable supply of electricity. In addition, by improving the energy efficiency of data centers and working in synergy with NYSERDA and AMD, New York State and its IT businesses and data centers can make considerable strides toward achieving their respective energy and environmental goals, while supporting economic development in this growing industry. More importantly, investments in energy efficient systems can help improve a data centers’ bottom line.
NYSERDA’s Industrial and Process Efficiency program plans to invest more than $100 million over the next three years in new and existing manufacturing and data center facilities that help reduce energy consumption. These funds can encourage sustainable load growth and help to significantly reduce the use of electricity and natural gas.
For more information, visit www.nyserda.org
Sal Graven is a Technical Information Associate at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
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.
What is an Embedded Platform?
Posted by Guest Blogger in 10:02 pm
In the technology industry – both hardware and software – we all use the term “platform” and many times, it means different things to different folks.
So let’s be perfectly clear about today’s announcement.
This is AMD’s platform value to our embedded customer: a single stop for leading-edge processors, graphics and chipsets. And of course, software from our software partners helps complete the package. No other company can develop and deliver this level of silicon technology integration and its benefits to embedded customers, who are more pressed than ever to deliver high performing, low power and differentiated systems and do so in the shortest window of time to maximize revenue. They know that an AMD embedded platform, whether it is client or commercial, can help give them an edge in walking that fine line between high-performance and low-power.
But what else can we offer? (I’m thinking of an infomercial – “But wait…there’s more!”) It’s not just balanced system architecture with advanced energy efficiency – it’s also a strong line-up of AMD chipsets and graphics processors that can help take performance and even the end-user experience to the next level. And like our colleagues on the server side of the house, we don’t compromise on the feature sets and we believe our variety of choice helps our customers develop targeted, differentiated products.
If you’re an embedded systems designer, I’d like to know your take on the value of a highly integrated platform.
Buddy Broeker is AMD’s Director of Embedded Computing Solutions. 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
Let’s Talk About the Weather
Posted by Guest Blogger in 9:09 am
When you come from Austin, TX, talking about the weather can take up a significant portion of one’s summer. Consider this year’s intense drought and more than sixty days of 100+ degree heat. You can bet that had folks in my home town talking. Now that my family has completed our move to Singapore for my new role leading AMD’s APAC region sales and marketing, we’re looking at an altogether new weather scenario – one that includes monsoon seasons and no shortage of rainfall.
Which brings me to the news here. Cray, one of AMD’s most strategic technology partners, has just announced a large, long-term contract with the Korean Meteorological Administration. KMA is one of the world’s foremost weather forecasting and climate research centers. Included in the contract is the Earth System Research Center (ESRC) – a cooperative program bringing together weather modeling expertise across the East-Asia Pacific region and exporting those learnings globally. Certainly some of the challenges for forecasters are unique to this region, such as typhoon and tsunami prediction, while others are more broad – earthquakes and climate change.
HPC customers (and enterprise server customers for that matter) encounter something similar: problems that are unique to their individual situation combined with the challenges that are universal to server computing. I believe that Cray does a phenomenal job of helping their customers address each. Their extensive line of supercomputers are based on the flexible, high-performing and low-power AMD OpteronTM processor and the combined architecture delivers phenomenal sustained application performance, reliability and ease of management.
But Cray also looks at each customer individually and helps address their particular challenges and goals for the long-term. With KMA, Cray has announced they will be providing services and application support. With the “Jaguar” system at Oak Ridge National Lab, they are embarking on a significant upgrade, taking the world’s highest performing wholly x86 supercomputer to the next level with the new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor.
I congratulate my colleagues here in APAC, as well as Cray, KMA, and the ESRC on a technology partnership that along with AMD, advances global science. I’ll be watching to see the developments of their research and near-term, I’m looking forward to learning new weather patterns that include some rain.
Ben Williams is AMD’s corporate vice president and general manager for AMD Asia Pacific. 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.
A Safe Bet
Posted by Guest Blogger in 10:37 pm
It’s already August and I’ve been giving some thought to a last quick summer get-away. Been to Las Vegas recently? It’s an astoundingly popular destination – more than 37 million visitors last year! And most of them began and ended their trip with the ubiquitous ringing sound of the slot machines. (On second thought, I may be looking for something a bit more low-key.)
But let me share a secret – many of those gaming machines folks pass on the way to baggage claim, the buffet or the blackjack table feature an AMD processor. Slot machines are one category of many so-called embedded systems that require massive compute power, extreme reliability and absolutely must be efficient to design, manufacture, and operate.
As Vegas has gone electronic, along with our cars, calendars and airport check-in, the number of CPU encounters the average person has in a day is astounding and growing. And many of those processors behind the curtain are of the same power-sipping AMD variety as the processors found in servers in your office or the laptop at home.
AMD has played a significant role in the embedded world since its inception and with input from our customers. We’ve developed a roadmap of high-performance processor, GPU or chipset options that can power everything from a six nines reliability telecom server to a notebook rugged enough to use on an oilfield platform, to a control switch on an assembly line.
Today, we have announced two new dual-core options for our ASB1 BGA platform. They deliver superior performance to an embedded platform that is already being deployed in thin clients, digital signage and you guessed it – gaming machines.
In my 20+ years working in various embedded markets, I’ve learned that a valuable dialog is one to one with system designers. So I look forward to sharing more on this blog about AMD’s role in the embedded realm and especially hearing from the embedded design community on how we can help you achieve a vision for the next ubiquitous, game-changing product. Hit me in the comments.
Buddy Broeker is AMD’s Director of Embedded Computing Solutions. 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.
OpenCL Changes the Game
Posted by Guest Blogger in 8:00 am
Up until now, GPGPU has been a research technology for early adopters – a new, promising experimental capability for scientists, engineers, financial professionals, and others running compute-intensive applications. Two elements have kept GPGPU largely in the ivory tower: first, the available APIs were proprietary and second, the GPU has been treated as an independent application accelerator instead of as part of a balanced heterogeneous architecture. OpenCL is a game-changing development in both respects, and AMD is taking an important step on that journey today.
In the past, proprietary programming models like CUDA limited target platforms to those from a single vendor. This may have been fine for students experimenting with a new approach, but mainstream ISVs and other large-scale developers need the flexibility inherent in industry standards. With a standard, cross-platform API, developers can deliver solutions on multiple vendors’ hardware while streamlining their development processes and timelines. This is what they’re waiting for – we hear it every day.
Of course no application runs entirely on the GPU. Beyond the obvious need for CPUs to drive execution, most mainstream applications are heterogeneous in nature. They have some functions that accelerate well on multicore CPUs, and others that are perfectly suited for a GPU’s data parallel architecture. A good development platform needs to take that into account – this is the difference between GPGPU as a niche accelerator and GPGPU as a new baseline feature, ready for tomorrow’s systems and applications.
Today, AMD is delivering the first beta release of an OpenCL implementation for the CPU. Managed by the independent Khronos Group, OpenCL addresses the need for a cross-platform, industry standard approach to development for heterogeneous architectures. This can enable more developers to take advantage of GPGPU acceleration in their applications, but what is even more compelling is the opportunity to build applications that leverage all of the system’s compute resources – CPUs and GPUs – to provide a superior user experience. As the only company that designs and delivers both high-performance GPUs and x86 CPUs to the market, AMD is uniquely qualified to help application developers drive full resource utilization forward without feeling the need to force-fit workloads onto one technology or the other.
With the new OpenCL implementation for the CPU, application developers can begin realizing the promise of heterogeneous computing. A video of a 4P Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor-based system (24 total cores) running an OpenCL-based, fluid/particle simulation can be seen here; for a developer-focused look at how OpenCL forms the basis of an evolving parallel programming ecosystem, see my colleague Margaret Lewis’ blog, Making the Universe Parallel.
Patricia Harrell is Director of Stream Computing 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.
Is a Cloud a Cluster or is a Cluster a Cloud?
Posted by Guest Blogger in 10:55 pm
With the recent publication of several articles about using cloud computing concepts for High Performance Computing applications (here and here), I’ve been wondering about the applications for high-performance, low-power processors. There’s been quite a bit written here already about cloud computing and energy efficiency, but what about applications where high performance and energy efficiency are both important?
At this time last year, the most energy efficient AMD OpteronTM processor-based server (based on the SPECpowerTM_ssj benchmark) could achieve only a score of 203 overall ssj_ops/watt (95,853 ssj_ops & 276W @ 100% target load) and consumed 164W at Active Idle. A server using the newest Six-Core AMD Opteron HE processor achieved a score of 1228 overall ssj_ops/watt (419,277 ssj_ops & 221W @ 100% target load) and consumed only 120W at Active Idle1. That’s more than 6x the performance-per-watt AND more than a 25% drop in Active Idle power.
AMD technology-based servers help increase performance-per-watt and decrease power consumption at the same time by using a suite of features we call AMD-P. AMD-P is supported by the Six-Core AMD Opteron 2400 and 8400 Series processors as well as the Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 and 8300 Series processors. This suite of features and the large number or processors that support them enable customers to build energy efficient two-socket, four-socket, and eight-socket servers which can efficiently meet the needs of almost any server application.
When we compare servers using the newest Six-Core AMD Opteron 2400 Series HE processors to servers using existing AMD Opteron processors, we find that a server based on the AMD Opteron 2400 Series HE processor is able to achieve 18% higher performance-per-watt than a server using Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 Series HE processors2 and also consumes 18% lower platform-level power than a server using Six-Core AMD Opteron 2400 Series processors3.
That’s a pretty big improvement over a processor that was released just six months ago!
In addition to lowering server Active Idle power and boosting server performance-per-watt, these new Six-Core AMD Opteron HE processors are designed to provide significantly more processing performance than prior low-power AMD Opteron processors. Servers using these processors are able to achieve up to 50% higher performance than servers using Quad-Core AMD Opteron 2300 Series HE and 8300 Series HE processors in the same power and thermal envelope. That’s like getting the performance of V6-powered Ford Mustang and the fuel efficiency of a four-cylinder Ford Fusion in the same car.
Whether they’re being used in a cloud cluster or a High Performance Computing cluster, the newest AMD Opteron HE processors provide plenty of performance for only a few watts.
What do you think – is a cloud a cluster or is a cluster a cloud?
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.
1Configuration Information: 2 x Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors (“Istanbul”) Model 2425 HE in Supermicro 1021M-UR+ server, 16GB (4×4GB DDR2-800) memory, 500GB SATA disk drive, Coldwatt CWA2-0650-10-SM01 power supply, Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise Edition SP1 64-bit
2Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2425 HE [SPECpower_ssj™2008 1228 overall ssj_ops/watt, 419,277 ssj_ops, 221W @ 100% target load] compared to Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2376 HE [SPECpower_ssj™2008 1044 overall ssj_ops/watt, 346,326 ssj_ops, 210W @ 100% target load]
3Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2425 HE [SPECpower_ssj™2008 1228 overall ssj_ops/watt, 419,277 ssj_ops, 221W @ 100% target load] compared to Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2435 [SPECpower_ssj™2008 1228 overall ssj_ops/watt, 487, 764 ssj_ops, 270W @ 100% target load]
SPEC and the benchmark name SPECpower_ssj are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For the latest SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008.
Efficiency Computing with Dell PowerEdge Servers Powered by AMD Opteron™ processors
Posted by Guest Blogger in 11:14 am
The introduction of the Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors (code named “Istanbul”) is big step forward for the IT industry. Dell works closely with AMD to address our customers’ needs with a full line-up of products to help simplify and lower the cost of managing their IT environments. The AMD Istanbul in Dell PowerEdge servers will do just that. We plan to introduce Istanbul in six servers in our portfolio including the PowerEdge 2970, R805 and R905 rack servers and the PowerEdge M605, M805, M905 blade servers.
Virtualization is one of the most effective ways for companies to improve server utilization and improve data center efficiency. A few years ago Dell and AMD collaborated to create some of the industry’s first servers optimized for virtualization, the Dell PowerEdge R805 and R905 rack servers. The PowerEdge R905 based on the AMD Opteron processor is a great example of how we’ve fine-tuned our servers to provide virtualization performance. It is an ideal formula of processor technology, massive memory capacity and I/O scalability.
Our customers adopting the new Istanbul platform will see even greater virtualization performance with the new Istanbul processors. In fact, our initial benchmarks show a whopping 38 percent improvement in virtualization performance. We expect to continue to have industry-leading benchmarks for 4 socket servers with Istanbul.
With previous generations of AMD Opteron processors, we have had demand from companies with large data centers that have space and power constraints and from companies that need high availability for large databases. We have good news for these companies: the performance per watt equation just got better. The Six-Core AMD Opteron processors pack tremendous performance increases – we are seeing chart-popping 61 percent increases on SPECint benchmarks – into the same power consumption parameters.
Customers can get six-core performance in the same footprint as with Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors to run the most compute intensive applications and scale higher while conserving energy. Our customers can get improved performance in I/O intensive applications like databases and technical computing without taking up more floor space, and still operating in the same power envelope. We are pleased to offer companies in industries like high performance computing for geosciences, oil and gas exploration, life sciences and research the AMD technology-based systems they need for performance intensive virtualized applications.
Congratulations AMD on the successful, and early, launch of the Six-Core AMD Opteron processors.
Armando Acosta is product manager for Dell PowerEdge servers. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Any claims made herein are based on Dell testing and have not been independently verified by AMD. 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.
A Focus on the Economics of Data Centers
Posted by Guest Blogger in 11:13 am
(9 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)Sun’s focus on Open Network Systems – from silicon and servers, to storage, networking, and software – continues to deliver unprecedented speed, simplicity, and savings to our customers. As part of our Open Network Systems strategy, we plan to add the new Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor to our existing portfolio of rackmount server and blade systems.
Sun understands our customers’ increased focus on the economics of their data centers as well as their desire to reduce overall complexity. Sun’s enhanced line of x64 servers and blades will take advantage of the greater performance, virtualization capabilities, and energy efficiency technologies powered by the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor. Sun systems powered by AMD’s newest processor will deliver up to 50 percent performance improvements compared to previous generation systems, giving our customers the performance and efficiency to handle demanding workloads with superior economics and energy efficiency.
Ready to scale with a single, consistent platform that spans from 2P to 8P servers, Sun’s x64 systems offer many choices for customers to realize breakthrough performance and unmatched virtualization capabilities, for enterprise and web applications, while supporting multiple operating systems . And with AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology, the Six-Core AMD Opteron processor delivers greater virtual machine bandwidth than ever before.
Sun is committed to continued innovation along our x64 roadmap Companies small, medium and large are turning to Sun to quickly and easily upgrade, consolidate and virtualize their data centers to drive the overall efficiency and cost improvements their businesses demand.
As we optimize our new line of Sun x64 systems for the marketplace, stay tuned for more details on availability and pricing. Sun’s enhanced product lines and unique approach to Open Network Systems helps maximize the economics of computing by delivering maximum scale, efficiency, manageability, performance and sustainability. For more information, please visit www.sun.com/x64/amd today.
Dimitrios Dovas is Director of Systems Marketing, x64 Volume Systems at Sun. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Any claims made herein are based on Sun testing and have not been independently verified by AMD. 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.
Breaking New Ground: The Six-Core AMD Opteron™ Processor
Posted by Guest Blogger in 11:13 am
Cray has a long and distinguished history of providing high performance computing technologies that allow our customers to push the frontiers of science and engineering. Modern Cray systems do this by providing the world’s most scalable, general purpose supercomputing system for science, the Cray XT5. At the heart of the XT5 are four key legs of scalable performance: the processor, the network, the infrastructure and the software. Today, we welcome the introduction of a processor that breaks new ground in scalability, the Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor.
We have been enthusiastically preparing for the arrival of AMD’s new processor, and we are pleased to be able offer both our new and existing customers a tremendous step forward in terms of performance, efficiency, price-performance and energy optimization. Simply put, our customers are going to love the level of scalability this processor provides.
The Cray XT series of supercomputers, including the Cray XT5 and the recently introduced Cray XT5m, equipped with this processor will feature a groundbreaking 12 cores per dual-socket computational node. The XT5m system, affectionately known as the “Mighty Mini,” will provide a powerful 1,000 to 6,000 AMD Opteron processor cores in a single cost-effective, scalable and fully upgradeable mid-ranged system. With 10 to 60 teraflops in this mid-ranged system, this is certainly not your father’s mid-ranged supercomputer. The even more powerful Cray XT5 systems will provide virtually limitless scalability, ranging from 1,000 to more than 300,000 AMD Opteron processor cores in a fully scalable hardware and software infrastructure.
Since we design our infrastructure for ease of upgradeability, our existing Cray XT5 customers can easily install the new six-core processor in their current systems with a simple processor swap and BIOS update. We have successfully migrated customers though four generations of AMD Opteron processor technology, from 1 to 2 to 4 and now to 6 AMD Opteron processor cores per socket and navigated the large system scalability challenges of each generation.
Our years of experience with these large HPC systems allows us to provide a proven, multi-core software environment that can take full advantage of this six-fold increase in scalability. Our software, including the Cray Linux Environment (CLE) and Cray Programming Environment (CPE) masks the growing complexities of this multi-core environment and provides users and administrators a unified environment that is different from the standard “cluster” experience.
What does this new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor mean for Cray, its customers and the HPC community?
We have a simple vision of our place in high performance computing. We want “better science” to be Cray’s sign and signature. The Cray XT5, utilizing Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, was the first general purpose system to break the petaflops barrier, providing a platform for groundbreaking science to hundreds of researchers in dozens of disciplines within weeks of installation. This new Six-Core AMD Opteron processor technology from AMD included in our XT5 and XT5m systems will mean more performance at a low cost, superior efficiency and more scalability. It means that researchers, scientists and engineers that utilize Cray supercomputers can now leverage a dramatic increase in computational power to address some of the world’s most challenging and sophisticated problems.
In short, it means “better science” and that is the most important thing of all.
Barry Bolding is Vice President of Scalable Systems at Cray. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Any claims made herein are based on Cray testing and have not been independently verified by AMD
Why AMD’s Head is in the Clouds
Posted by Guest Blogger in 3:59 pm
If you follow AMD closely, you know that of late, we’ve been driving a pretty lively industry discussion around battery life metrics for laptops. The basic premise is this: while the product description tags that describe laptops in your local retail outlet purport to tell you how long each computer’s battery life is, those figures are typically very overstated, as they are arrived at using a benchmark test that essentially measures battery life while the computer is idling. As our CMO puts it, that would be akin to measuring your car’s gas mileage based solely on highway miles. AMD is proposing that the industry adopt a “city/highway miles” rating system for consumer notebooks with two metrics, one that represents the battery life for the computer when at idle, and one that tells you how long the battery will last when you’re actually putting it through its paces. Others agree this approach makes sense.
As a server guy, it’s my contention that the exact same principles apply in the datacenter, and better metrics are needed to help users, especially cloud users.
Thermal Design Point (TDP) is a metric which measures the maximum amount of power the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate and is used by system designers. But we at AMD believe that TDP is almost irrelevant in helping IT staff plan a realistic power budget for their datacenter because it tells you absolutely nothing about how much power a chip will typically draw when running under normal loads. There’s also an issue with using the TDP metric correctly. AMD discloses the maximum TDP; after all, the maximum number is what a system designer needs to build their server.
In 2007, we introduced a new power consumption measurement, called “Average CPU Power.” While no measure is perfect, ACP is designed to give customers a more accurate idea of the power consumed by the processor based on measuring the power consumption of a number of different workloads at the processor while operating in a more typical thermal environment. As we said when we launched ACP, “a processor with a 115W TDP may not break the 70W mark under extremely high workloads – just like a car with a 150MPH speedometer rarely hits speeds above 90MPH. Some customers were unnecessarily limiting the amount of growth within their server racks based on an over-estimated power budget and potentially sacrificing data center efficiency.
The most important reason why I think ACP is more relevant than ever before is interest in cloud computing is greater than ever. More and more users are looking for answers to questions about how cloud computing impacts them and their business. ACP numbers can be very indicative of what customers would see in a cloud computing environment. In our experience, the cloud environment encompasses balanced workloads with more emphasis on I/O and virtualization. And in contrast to the “worst case possible” scenario measured by TDP, cloud servers are rarely completely idle and can typically operate between 10 – 50% of their maximum, thus providing headroom to scale if needed.
What’s my point? ACP is a fantastic metric and really the most useful processor power draw metric out there for IT and facility managers to leverage for their power budgeting calculations and models when planning a real world datacenter (again, we might be biased since we developed it.) Self-congratulating for ACP aside, the reality is nothing beats measuring the power drawn by a server at the wall. However, it appears that ACP, introduced well before cloud computing became all the rage, was actually rather prescient. Suddenly having our head in the clouds doesn’t sound so bad, does it?
Brent Kerby is a Senior Product Marketing 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.