Archive for the category Featured Bloggers
“Istanbul” – The HPCWire Reader’s Choice
Posted by John Fruehe in 3:39 pm
Loading ...This week, at the SuperComputing 2009 event, AMD received the HPCWire Reader’s Choice Award for our Six Core AMD Opteron™ Processor (the one you know as “Istanbul.”)
When you consider that two of the largest High Performance Computing systems in the world (Oak Ridge’s “Jaguar” and the University of Tennessee’s “Kraken”) were recently and simply upgraded from their quad-core processors to six core processors and got a sizeable boost in performance, to put it mildly, it probably wouldn’t be a shock to hear that we were recognized by the HPC community.
What makes this award great is not that we are being recognized, but the fact that this is a reader’s choice award. When we get a press award, it’s great; but when the readers decide that we deserve recognition, that’s another story.
In the HPC world, flash and advertising won’t cut it. These are the men and women who slave over huge systems, trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of them. They appreciate performance, but they also really appreciate consistency and simplicity – those help them focus on the task at hand – designing alternative energy sources, predicting weather and climate change, developing the next breakthrough drug, or analyzing crash data to make our transportation systems safer.
Knowing that these folks find our product outstanding means the world to AMD, because we build the AMD Opteron processor for them.
So, Margaret, be sure to bring that award home, we’ll try to clear some room in the trophy case. While we are in there, maybe we need to expand it a bit, because with 12-core processors with 4 channels of memory on the horizon, we might need some extra space.
John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing 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.
R2 is For You
Posted by John Fruehe in 8:01 am
I spent the last 2 weeks traveling in Europe and I can tell you that you can’t put enough emphasis on your companions. When you are on the road with someone 24/7, you appreciate a good fit. Whether it is the appetite for a good Schweinshaxe in Munich or the appreciation of a football game in London (sorry Liverpool, Fulham was on a roll), having good companions makes being thousands of miles from home tolerable. With 3 others on this trip, it was clear that we had the right fit.
Windows Server® 2008 R2 is also the perfect companion to the Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor. With its emphasis on multi-threading and efficiency, how can you argue that this new state-of-the-art OS should deserve anything else.
And as AMD moves from the six-core world of today to the 12-core world planned for 2010, we expect Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 to work seamlessly. Whether it is virtualizing file, print or email services, or managing and analyzing your business critical data, the new OS is designed to tie in well with the features that we have integrated into our processors.
Microsoft has also integrated some new power management drivers to help take advantage of the new power management features in the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor (currently codenamed “Magny-Cours”). We expect the new C1E power state to bring a new level of power efficiency, allowing the processor to power down the memory controller and HyperTransport™ technology links when not in use, and helping drive down idle power consumption.
If you are looking to consolidate hardware, the support of AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology provides more flexibility to customers running virtual machines. For instance, moving an active virtual machine between two servers can be seamless with Microsoft’s Hyper-V; even if you are running between different versions of the Windows® OS on different generations of AMD processors. As a matter of fact, we have even demonstrated a live virtual machine running between one of our current generation of Six-Core AMD Opteron processor-based servers and a server based on the upcoming next-generation AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor to show how seamless the live migration can be for customers. Check out the video on the virtualization blog here.
Just like running a team of people through multiple countries, you need some policies to keep everyone in line. For us, it is the new rule that the hotel safe (and not your laptop bag) is where your passport needs to stay. For Windows Server 2008 R2, the policies can revolve around power savings and not around passports. Utilizing the AMD PowerNow!™ technology, group policies can be set for clients using Windows 7 (Windows 7 capable PC required), enabling clients to enter a “sleep” mode when not in use.
So, if you have to travel, make sure that your traveling partners are compatible, and when you are building out your data center, make sure that your hardware and software is compatible. If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2, there is no better platform, in my opinion, than an AMD Opteron processor-based server.
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.
Faster Supercomputing Cats Fueled by Six-Core AMD Opteron™ Processors
Posted by John Fruehe in 4:10 pm
In the June 2009 TOP 500 list, the Oak Ridge National Labs’ “Jaguar” system was #2, edging close behind the “Roadrunner” cluster and was the first wholly x86 system to achieve a petaflop in performance. Of course, both utilize AMD Opteron processors to reach their record shattering performance.
However, this summer, Oak Ridge embarked on a project to increase their capacity and performance – an upgrade of the 37,000 processors in the cluster to Six-Core AMD Opteron processors.
Because of AMD’s consistent platform strategy, with processor commonality and common sockets, the task was remarkably simple. It took approximately 5 minutes per 8P server module to do the upgrade. (Watch the upgrade here.)
When we developed the Socket F (1207), we anticipated a long life for the socket. As a matter of fact, we anticipate that socket living through the end of 2010. Customers who have standardized on products based on those processors will probably want some consistency across their data centers. And customers that have built out capacity on those platforms might want to upgrade, something that is easy and painless for our customers. Contrast this with our competitor’s “tick tock” approach – which threatens a continual pace of disruption.
With this upgrade, “Jaguar” now takes a new spot in the TOP500 list. First. That is one fast cat – and it is purring along on AMD Opteron technology.
Researchers were quickly back online and with this additional performance they now have the ability to solve complex (frankly, mind-boggling) problems faster, in addition to tackling more projects, some that have previously been out of their reach.
To get an understanding of Oak Ridge National Labs’ scientific research and their take on the TOP500, take a look at this video.
John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing 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.
AMD Opteron Processor – Delivering True Value, Not Just Benchmarks
Posted by John Fruehe in 4:39 pm
(10 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)I left the office yesterday at 5:00, headed to the trail for my weekly ride. Because of the recent rain, we shifted to City Park, one of the most technical mountain bike trails in Austin. If you just looked at us and our bikes in the parking lot, you’d notice that the older guy with the borrowed bike (because I finally broke my frame after 4 years) would probably not fare well against better riders, younger riders or newer bikes.
But looks can be deceiving. While I didn’t have the flashy skills or the newest ride, I did have a dedication and a lack of technical problems that actually allowed me to finish the ride ahead of others. Sometimes the outcome isn’t always as obvious.
Too many people get caught up in the benchmarks and think that is the end of the story. Benchmarks can be important as an indicator, but they don’t tell the whole story. As a matter of fact, they really only tell a portion of PART of the story. In my opinion, making a decision based on benchmark alone is like buying a car because you like the color. That is great if all you care about is a red car, but so few of us really think that way in the real world.
One of the things that I have been telling customers is that they need to step out of the “socket” world and start thinking more about the work that needs to get done when assessing the platforms. Sometimes the answer is not obvious.
The non-obvious thread for today started this morning when I went to check out the latest review on AnandTech.com of the AMD Opteron processor vs. our competitor’s processor (which my colleague Margaret Lewis also discusses here). We sent them a review system recently and during their testing, they came up with some interesting comments.
Comparing a 2 socket Intel server to a 4 socket AMD server, you start to see that if you step outside of the raw performance area, there are plenty of other places to be looking, like threading and efficiency, not just clock speed. Here is what AnandTech had to say when comparing our six-core 2435 to a higher clock speed quad core:
“If your application scales well, two 2.6GHz Opteron 2435 will offer 15% better (and sometimes more) performance than a 2.9GHz Opteron 2389 with the same power consumption.”
More performance, at the same power envelope and lower clock speed. Not always the most obvious answer, but clearly a great choice for threaded applications. (And don’t think that applications will be less threaded in the future.) Memory is another area less than obvious. Here is what AnandTech had to say:
“Using relatively ‘old’ technology such as DDR2, the hex-core Opteron based servers are very affordable, especially if you compare them with similar Xeon servers.”
Yeah, I was the old guy on the trail, but that didn’t mean I was the last. I can think of a couple of younger guys finishing after me – so sometimes “newer” doesn’t me “better”. Again, not the obvious answer, but until the prices of DDR-3 come in line with DDR-2, this is our secret weapon. And in a tough economy, who doesn’t want to be smart with their IT budgets.
We have tremendous consistency, but people expect that. And they expect that all processors in the family will have the same features. That is obvious, right? Here’s how AnandTech saw it.
“If you chose the Xeon platform, you should be aware of the fact that Intel’s low end is much less interesting: the best Xeon 55xx CPUs have a clock speed between 2.26 and 2.93GHz. The low end models, the 5504 and 5506 are pretty crippled, with no Hyper-Threading, no Turbo Boost, and only half as much L3 cache (4MB). These crippled CPUs can keep up with the quad-core Opterons at about 2.5GHz, but they are the worst Xeons when you look at idle and full load power. The performance per Watt of the Xeon EE550x is pretty bad compared to the more expensive parts.”
You’ve heard me talk a lot about “no compromises” in our products, and this is what we are talking about. Just because you can’t afford to buy the most expensive processor in the stack shouldn’t mean that you have to compromise so much. Cutting the cache in half? That is not obvious to the typical customer.
When you step back and take a look at all of this in full, you see what was obvious before – 2P servers are the best value for most workloads – is becoming somewhat less obvious. And as we get into 2010, the value that AMD will bring to market will blur the lines even more. It’s time to stop looking at the world of sockets and start looking at the workload, the power consumption and the cost. Only then, does everything become obvious.
Otherwise you’ll just be like that young guy tonight, standing on the trail as the old guy blew past him. Sometimes the obvious answer isn’t always the only answer.
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.
AMD Opteron Processors Scale the Alps
Posted by John Fruehe in 10:49 am
Nestled just north of the Italian border, in southern Switzerland, you will find CSCS, the Swiss National Supercomputing Center. Long known for chocolate and breathtaking Alpine landscape, Switzerland is also known in the supercomputing circles as an HPC powerhouse.
We traveled to Manno, just north of Lugano to meet with some of the brightest minds in HPC, as well as unveil their latest supercomputer, Monte Rosa – named after the Swiss mountain, the tallest in the regional border with their Italian neighbors.
Monte Rosa is based on a Cray XT5 platform, which is quite popular with the supercomputing crowd because of its massively scalable architecture and high-throughput interconnects. Monte Rosa features 14,762 processors, capable of delivering up to 141 teraflops of peak performance.
To complement the huge number of processors, 29.5 terabytes of main system memory are available for computation. Of course you need somewhere to store all of the results, so a 290 terabyte storage system holds the results from processing runs.
With reported performance of nearly 10 times that of its predecessor, the new Monte Rosa is liquid cooled, allowing it to fit in the same physical space, helping to optimize the center’s floorspace.
The system was installed in record time in May of this year, thanks to Cray’s modular engineering efforts, allowing the center to begin immediately reaping the rewards of the system. Within only a few days of bringing the system online, it was already being utilized near its full capacity.
The productivity seen with the new system is expected to help a variety of industries within Switzerland. While this system is based on Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processors today, there is already a planned upgrade to Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processors before the end of the year, bringing the total performance to over 200 teraflops.
While some computing centers focus on building out capacity, CSCS likes to focus on the applications. They’ve built up an impressive staff of technologists who can not only focus on optimizing the supercomputer platform, but also, spend most of their time in the applications, where they believe they can deliver their true value-add. Science and engineering applications such as climate, weather, biology chemistry, physics and material sciences are all aided by this new cluster.
But that is not to say that they haven’t built out some amazing capacity. Monte Rosa is now the 23rd largest supercomputer in the world and the 4th largest in Europe according to the June 2009 Top 500 list.
With the performance that they are seeing using Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, we can’t wait to see what happens when they are able to increase capacity with the Six-Core AMD Opteron processors.
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.
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
AMD Opteron Processors + AMD Chipsets = the Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts
Posted by John Fruehe in 10:00 pm
It’s a cloudy afternoon here in London, which is great because yesterday I was soaked while trying to see customers. Clouds trump rain any day in my book. A little known fact (outside of this country) is that the city of London is actually 2 cities, the City of London and the City of Westminster.
For London, “the the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is very true, especially when morning hits and the tube traffic swells the population of the city.
For AMD, our new server platform, the combination of AMD OpteronTM processors and the new AMD chipsets show that the whole is larger than the sum of the individual parts as well.
AMD introduced 3 new chipsets this week, the SR5690, SR5670 and SR5650. And just like the different neighborhoods here in London, each has their own unique characteristics, yet each shares a lot in common with each other. They are all built around the same silicon, with the same socket, same programming interface and same drivers. Sound familiar? But they have different numbers of PCI Express® lanes, different power consumption and different pricing, allowing our partners to customize their platforms around these different offerings.
And just like the swelling tube traffic this morning, these new chipsets have 2 features to help the system handle large amounts of traffic. They feature HyperTransportTM 3 Technology allowing for high speed interconnection between the processors and the I/O devices. In addition, once you get to those devices, you’ll find that our support for the new PCI Express® Gen 2 technology allows for high speed peripherals, like Quad Data Rate Infiniband, to be included in the servers. If you are in an HPC environment or other clustering environment, having a high performance and low latency interconnect can really swing performance in the right direction.
And if you are into virtualization, these chipset provide the hardware support for I/O Virtualization, an emerging virtualization technology for increased performance and security. If you want to get a peak at these chipsets in action – check out the AMD Virtualization blog “AMD Showcases Virtualization Innovation at VMworld Conference” for recap of the demos we did at VMworld.
These new platforms will also include a new platform specification from AMD called “Kroner.” Kroner is a nod to those in the cloud computing space who are looking for ultra-high levels of power efficiency. Optimized around best practices in power efficiency, the first Kroner platform, the Tyan S8208 is a single 1U system with two “twin” Kroner boards, able to deliver that impressive performance while only “sipping” the power at the wall. After hearing a customer tell me that they have a 4KW limit for their racks and can only put 10 servers in each, a platform like Kroner can go a long way towards helping optimize space in the data center.
With these new introductions, AMD is moving much more towards a platform company and not just a supplier of microprocessors – this was a key driver for the acquisition of ATI. We’ve seen the fruits of that on the client side, and now we are seeing it on the server side. Customers live the idea of an integrated platform with processor and chipset from the same company because that allows for much tighter integration of technology. Just like London and Westminster.
The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.
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.
The Scorecard
Posted by John Fruehe in 9:43 am
There’s an old saying in baseball - “you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” In this age of always-connected information, that scorecard is the internet. It’s amazing how accurate that information can be. And not be. All at the same time.
I am constantly asked about our different products, both existing and future. Clarification of what the AMD Opteron TM processor products are and where they are targeted is a common request, so I thought it might be a good idea to put it all down in one place; a “cheat sheet” for the IT professional. When it comes to the future products, you might see a lack of details. This is on purpose, as there is some information that we don’t release until we launch the products. (When we discuss the target markets, we are speaking in general terms, because, depending on applications, actual processor choices could vary. That is why we recommend talking to your OEM or system integrator to choose the best solution.)
The Current lineup:
Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor (formerly codenamed “Shanghai”) – This is a 45nm quad-core processor with a 6MB level 3 cache. It fits into all of the existing Socket F (1207) systems and is targeted at current workloads like web services, network infrastructure, departmental applications, technical workloads, and those applications that favor clock frequency over thread count. It is productized as the AMD Opteron 2000 Series processors (2P) and AMD Opteron 8000 Series (4P and 8P) processors.
Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor (formerly codenamed “Istanbul”) – This is also a 45nm design that is based on the same core as the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, but the design includes 6 cores, not 4, teamed up with the 6MB L3 cache, and plugs into the Socket F (1207) systems. Because of the higher number of cores (12 cores in a 2P system and 24/48 cores in a 4P/8P system), customers typically use these processors for workloads like cloud computing, virtualization, database and HPC where workloads can be very threaded.
Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor (formerly codenamed “Suzuka”) – This is the single socket version of the “Shanghai” die, focused on 1P servers that are typically utilized for web serving, remote locations or running small businesses. You’ll see all of the same features of the “Shanghai” processor, with the exception that it is available only in the standard power band (which is by far the most popular choice for AMD Opteron 1000 Series processors.)
The Future Lineup:
In Q1 2010 we plan to introduce the “Maranello” platform, featuring the processor variant currently codenamed “Magny-Cours.” This is a new socket (G34) and the processor is expected to merge both the top end of the 2P market with the 4P/8P market, all conveniently in a single processor, the AMD Opteron 6000 Series processor. Core choices are expected to be 8 and 12 cores, with massive memory scalability through the 4 channels of DDR-3 memory per processor. By utilizing the same processor for both 2P and 4P designs, the AMD Opteron 6000 Series processor should enable several very interesting and flexible platforms with scalability of 16 cores through 48 cores. Clearly this processor is targeted at virtualization, HPC, database and business applications.
In Q2, we plan to introduce a new platform for web, cloud and infrastructure applications – the “San Marino” platform, featuring the 4-core and 6-core processor variants currently codenamed “Lisbon” in the C32 socket. With low core counts, these processors are expected to be a favored choice for applications that scale well up to 8-12 threads. The platform choices around “San Marino” are expected to help OEMs optimize their C32 systems for low power consumption and low cost. We believe these AMD Opteron 4000 Series processors will have the potential to help users achieve new levels of price/performance and performance/watt. When you walk through a data center and see rack after rack of servers, it’s clear that reducing the cost and power footprint of the “workhorse” servers can have a huge impact on the bottom line. Two channels of DDR-3 memory help provide the right level of scalability for these 1P/2P designs while contributing to low power consumption and cost.
Best of all, while the C32 and G34 sockets are physically different, the chipsets, cores and main BIOS core functions are expected to be common across both of these platforms, helping enable OEMs to develop platforms around AMD offerings, and contributing to easier deployment and management by end users.
The consolidation of 1000/2000/8000 to the 4000/6000 product line is expected to reduce the number of overlapping platforms, increase commonality and flexibility for customers, and reduce the overall SKU count for OEMs – contributing to more flexibility and cleaner scalability from 4 cores to 48 cores. Truly a re-definition of the server market that focuses on how industry partners take products to market and customers deploy instead of how processor manufacturers see the world. Customer-centric innovation.
Power Bands:
Customers have a variety of needs, and it would be foolish to think that one processor can solve all of your processing challenges. So, just as we have different models (1000/2000/8000 today and 4000/6000 in the future) we have different power bands to meet specific power needs.
By far the most popular model is the “standard power” with a 75W ACP (average CPU power), which doesn’t even have a designator. This is “Opteron classic” if you are filling in your score card, the choice for price/performance. In addition to this model, there are 3 specialty power bands:
SE – for those that want relatively higher raw performance. By driving to a 105W ACP, we can increase the clock speed for customers running frequency-dependent applications.
HE – Delivering a lower ACP (55W), the HE processors focus on delivering great price/performance/watt for environments where power may be constrained/more expensive or where density is an issue (like with blades)
EE – This is the specialty processor that delivers absolutely the lowest power consumption of any AMD Opteron processor, with a 40W ACP. Customers, like cloud/web 2.0, look for processors like the EE to help reduce the total power per rack because they are in extremely dense environments.
The “Maranello” platform is expected to support SE, Standard and HE power bands, and the “San Marino” platform is planned to support Standard, HE and EE power bands.
So, there you are, a full lineup of heavy hitters – it should be a great game. With this score card you’ll be able to tell who is at bat and who is on deck, so sit back and enjoy the game.
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.
Under the Influence
Posted by John Fruehe in 12:31 pm
NetworkWorld recently released its list of the 11 Most Influential Microprocessors of All Time. I have to agree that the AMD OpteronTM 240 Series processor is one of the most influential processors because it is the singular reason that I left my last job of almost ten years – I came to AMD specifically to work on the AMD Opteron processor because I realized the game-changing potential of this technology.
The list is a relative “who’s who” of the microprocessor world. Every processor clearly had a huge impact on the market, and it is an honor to be included in the list. Most importantly, we are the only processor in the list that was released after 1993. AND we are the only one that is still in the market today in any reasonable volume (somehow, somewhere, somebody is probably utilizing the others because they were such strong designs).
Back in 2002, a year before the launch of the AMD Opteron processor AMD and Microsoft announced a cooperative effort to develop 64-bit version of windows for AMD 64-bit processors. We were the first mainstream processor to enable 64-bit, and our shared vision was that 64-bit computing would drive the data center of the future. I guess you could say that we helped influence the move to 64-bit.
In 2003, there was no such thing as a “low powered server processor.” Enterprise-class processors were big, hot and power hungry. Now look at where we are today. The new AMD Opteron EE processor delivers six cores in a single processor, with a 40W ACP. Power is one of the biggest concerns in the data center today, and we influenced the market with the introduction of power efficiency for servers back before people realized how important power would be.
What about price? If you can remember the pre-AMD processor Opteron days (or the “dark ages” as I like to call them), there was little competition in x86 server processors. Price/performance was a very limited concept, your price/performance came at the platform level, not really at the processor level. Prices were significantly higher than they are today. AMD influence? Check.
Remember the world of single core computing? It may be hazy for most of you because for the past 4 years, almost every server processor sold was probably a multi-core. And who had the first multi-core X86 processor? Yep, the influencer.
So what does the server processor of 2009 look like? Well, let’s take a look at the profile:
- Multi-core
- 64-bit x86
- Integrated memory controller
- Low power options
- High performance per watt
- High price performance
- Hardware-based virtualization capabilities
When you put the list together, it is clear that AMD has had a significant impact on the server processor market. Regardless of which processors you are deploying, what you enjoy today in your X86 data centers are either AMD Opteron processors, or processors that have been heavily influenced by our technology decisions. Some would say that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” I like to call it influence.
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.
Efficiency, Flexibility, and VMworld 2009
Posted by Andy Parma in 10:19 pm
Efficiency and flexibility are two of the themes for VMworld 2009, so it seems like an appropriate time to discuss the efficiency and flexibility of AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture. As Tim Mueting and I discussed on YouTube , this architecture and AMD VirtualizationTM (AMD-VTM) technology enable servers using AMD OpteronTM 8400 Series processors to consolidate more virtual machines than servers using a competing architecture1. Direct Connect Architecture also lets AMD deliver socket-compatible processor solutions ranging from our highest performance AMD OpteronTM 8400 SE Series processors to our new energy efficient AMD OpteronTM 2400 EE Series processors.
When Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2384 was introduced less than a year ago, servers using this processor achieved a number of performance records (here and here) and a key reviewer concluded that “Right now, it is clear that the latest AMD Opteron is in the lead.” If you look at the performance of Six-Core AMD OpteronTM 2419 EE processor-based servers, you see that servers using this new low-power processor are outperforming servers using the Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2384. That’s pretty impressive.
And the energy savings from using low-power Six-Core AMD OpteronTM EE processors (compared to 75W ACP Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processors) are significant. When we replaced the 75W ACP Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processors in a ZT Systems server with 40W ACP Six-Core AMD OpteronTM EE processors, server power consumption at 100% load dropped by 124W (40%).
Surpassing the performance of Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2384-based servers using extremely energy efficient processors is quite a feat. Achieving higher performance, while consuming less power, is even more impressive. To top it off, the Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2419 EE is being offered at the same price that the Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2384 was sold for last year2.
Higher performance. Lower server power consumption. Same introductory processor price. Wow!
As excited as I am about our current products, I can’t resist the temptation to mention the Six-Core AMD OpteronTM EE processors (codenamed “Lisbon”) that we’re planning to introduce next year. These six-core processors are planned to have a rated power consumption of less than 40W – that’s lower than the rated power consumption of most of today’s quad-core mobile processors. A processor that combines the registered memory and RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability) features of a server processor with the power consumption of a mobile processor?
I think that I’ll be typing “Wow!” again next year.
Whether you think of “flexibility” as the ability to host more virtual machines using a Six-Core AMD OpteronTM 8400 Series processor-based server, or you view “efficiency” as the capability to achieve higher performance while consuming less server power using Six-Core AMD OpteronTM 2419 EE processors, it’s clear that servers using AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture are ideal for the next generation of computing.
To find out more about AMD VirtualizationTM (AMD-VTM) technology and AMD OpteronTM processors, visit us at booth 1408 at VMworld or visit www.amd.com/virtualization.
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.
1Based on 30 tiles x 6 VMs for 48-core HP ProLiant DL785 G6 server, as tested using the VMmark benchmark (http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html).
2Pricing for Quad-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2384 reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com as of November 2008. Pricing for Six-Core AMD OpteronTM processor Model 2419 EE reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com as of August 2009.