How do you keep it all straight?

At Microsoft, they utilize their Bing application, Bing Maps, to sort it all out. One of the more interesting demos that I saw this year at the Microsoft Partner Conference was the “context-based search experience” from Bing.  If you have ever searched for something and found plenty of nonsensical results, you appreciate the work that Microsoft is doing to bring some order to searches.  Bing Maps does a great job of understanding all of the complexities of searching and tries to tie in not only what you are looking for, but the context around it.  And that takes a lot of horsepower.

To achieve their objectives for storing and correlating petabytes of information, Microsoft needed a massive number of cores, along with high power efficiency.  In their data center in Colorado, they deployed tens of thousands of AMD Opteron™ processor cores inside Dell Nucleon servers.  While the Nucleon may not seem like a household name, there is a reason for that.  These servers are customized through the Dell Data Center Solutions group, a team of experts who focus on large, scale out data centers and have a particular expertise around very large, dense data center deployments.

These servers delivered the density and most importantly, the power efficiency that Microsoft needed to make their Bing Maps come to life.

One of the most interesting aspects of this deployment is not what was being deployed, but how the servers were deployed.  Dell delivered complete containerized solutions to Microsoft that allowed them to quickly deploy and manage the server farm. The Dell Modular Data Center actually utilizes fans and cooling at the container level versus managing the cooling at a server level.  In the world of homogeneous workloads where thousands of servers are all running the same application, this makes tremendous sense because you scale the workload across nodes, minimizing power and heat fluctuations and allowing you to manage the power and cooling aspects at the container level for much greater efficiency.  Microsoft believes that by doing this, Dell helped them reduce power requirements by as much as 80% while simultaneously delivering up to 5X the compute density.

One of the key components in this solution was the low-power AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor, designed specifically for these environments where density and power efficiency are key.  But with 4 and 6 cores, it is clear that while customers are getting exceptional power efficiency and density, they are not doing so by sacrificing their core density – something that a large scale out data center really demands.

As the world continues to evolve towards the cloud, and these large scale out data centers continue to become more plentiful, we’ll hopefully see more customers opting to deploy the AMD Opteron 4100 Series processors in solutions like the Dell Nucleon server from the Dell Data Center Solutions group.  And that ultimately means clouds with high performance, density and power efficiency.

To me, that sounds like a perfect map to the cloud.  Bing Maps has is all laid out for you.

For more information, you can download the complete case study at: http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/corporate~case-studies~en/Documents~2011-bing-10009998.pdf.aspx

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

Thanks in part to AMD’s technological leadership in low-power processors and optimization of the server platform roadmap for density, the issues around power in the data center power are fairly well understood, and we have helped OEMs develop some smart solutions on the market today with more coming very soon.

However, it is not enough to think about this year or even the next 5 years.  What happens in the timeframe that is “off the roadmap” of today’s technology?  This is where AMD’s research team has posed some key questions and NYSERDA has stepped up along with Clarkson University in upstate NY, HP, and other industry partners to help answer the questions.

We know that renewable energy – solar and wind power – plays a major role in our future.  How do we link this vital resource to the data center and I mean directly link power source to servers?  (You know AMD is all about eliminating the bottlenecks!)  That is one key issue – getting power from a wind turbine directly to a data center like an HP POD without building a traditional electrical grid between the two. 

Renewable sources can also be intermittent.  What do you do if the sun does not shine one day or there is an atypical calm in the wind one evening?  A data center’s reliability cannot tolerate lulls in the action, so a big question from our AMD Research labs that takes this all one step further is “How can we shift a compute load automatically and reliably between renewable energy sources without resorting to a traditional electrical grid?”

This is a multi-faceted problem and we expect the solutions will fundamentally alter how we design and build computing resources in the future.  The economic implications are not insignificant.  For example, the cost of laying optical fibers is orders of magnitude less than the cost of building power lines.  Estimates can range from $500/mile for “dark” fibers to $15,000/mile for new optical fibers compared to $750k-2 million/mile for new electric transmission lines. The potential gains for the IT industry and the energy sector are exciting and, frankly, huge.  You can bet you will be hearing more about this in the months and years to come.

Alan Lee is the corporate vice president of Research and Advanced Development at AMD.  His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

Many people in the cloud and dense computing world have data center racks that are packed that tight.  Every watt counts because at load, they are maximizing everything in their power budget per rack. 

For customers like this we have a new feature in our upcoming processors codenamed “Interlagos” and “Valencia”: TDP Power Cap. [eWeek takes a look at TDP Power Cap and potential impact for cloud/mega datacenter customers here.]

In today’s products you can cap the power of a server by turning off processor states, though that ultimately can lead to somewhat lower performance. There are a lot of our customers who value power efficiency over performance, so it is not a real issue for them.  But what if you could set low power limits AND get the performance that the platform offers?

With today’s AMD Power Cap Manager, you can limit the processor P-states and cut power consumption although this limits the processor’s ability to get to the top frequency (which is also the most power-hungry spot on the curve as you can imagine…).  By essentially “locking out” the top P-state, the processor never gets into that state, even under heavy utilization, helping cut down total power to the processor.

With the new TDP Power Cap for AMD Opteron™ processors based on the upcoming “Bulldozer” core, customers will be able to set TDP power limits in 1 watt increments.  This means that instead of having to choose between different TDPs for processors, you can actually buy any power range and then modulate down.

Why would someone want to limit TDP?

Well, let’s say that you have a maximum power draw on your fully configured server of 300W, and you have 42 slots in your rack.  The simple math says that you have 12.6Kw of power load that you need to be able to support.  Now, if your power budget only allows you to bring 12Kw to the rack, you essentially have 2 slots that need to be left open in the rack because you can only support 40 and not 42 servers.  But, by utilizing a custom TDP, you could drop the max power that some servers could draw, bringing you in under the limit of 12Kw and still getting 42 servers in the rack.

Best of all, if your workload does not exceed the new modulated power limit, you can still get top speed because you aren’t locking out the top P-state just to reach a power level.

This is truly essential for blades, clouds and other dense environments where every watt counts.

John Fruehe is the Director of Product Marketing for Server, Embedded and FireStream products at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

Microwatt, Kilowatt, Megawatt, Gigawatt it does all add up!  The AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform will debut as the world’s lowest power per core server processor¹ ideal for those conscious about power.

Does 1W really matter?  Well maybe not for one server, but yes indeed it does when you start to look at it from a data center level, which is why I enlisted Brent Kerby, our resident power expert to explain the value of each watt:

• According to Liebert² 1 Watt saved at the processor saves approximately 2.84 Watts of total consumption.
• It is estimated that 1 Watt is a lot – those 2.84W (measured at the meter) of consumption will cost you up to almost $2.74 USD per/watt in annual operational costs².
• Also according to IDC, in 2010 $44.6B was spent for purchasing new server equipment and $27.5B was spent on energy bills to support the IT space³.  This is making running these servers greater than ½ of the actual cost to buy these servers.
• The AMD Opteron™ 4000 Series platform will debut as the world’s lowest power per core server processor¹ -  this is calculated by taking the TDP divided by the # of cores.  In comparing our lowest power consumption server processors, it’s clear:
  • AMD:  35W/6 cores = 5.83W/core
  • Intel:   40W/4 cores = 10W/core 

That’s up to 40% less watts per core!

So based everything said above what does this mean for a server environment consisting of 100 servers over three years??   How much do these all these little extra watts add up to?  Well, it could be as much as $9K over three years!⁴ Now maybe the 100 servers is not exactly your environment, so we invite you to check out your estimated savings based on your environment with AMD’s latest platform power saving estimator tool listed here:  http://sites.amd.com/us/mod/tools/Pages/server-power-estimator.aspx

While determining precise dollar amount for 1W can be difficult (Liebert, IDC, or AMD’s power calculator will all show different #s), it is true that there is a cost to each and every watt, and beyond just the processor, AMD is continuing to pursue optimizing power efficiency and helping power conscious customers ranging from individuals to cloud and high density environments.

Anita Tulsiani is a product marketing manager 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 links sites and no endorsement is implied

1. As of June 8, 2010, AMD Opteron™ processor Models 4162 EE /4164 EE have the lowest known power per core of any server processor, at 5.83W (35W/6 = 5.83W/core).  Intel’s L5609 is 10W/core (40W/4 cores). See http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/products/server/processor/xeon5000/specifications.

2. Source:  http://www.liebert.com/common/ViewDocument.aspx?id=880.  0.00284KW (2.84 W converted to Kilowatts) * 8760 (annual hours of server operation) x $0.11 (assuming KwH rate for energy usage) = $2.74/watt

3.  SOURCE: IDC / Worldwide Server Energy Expense 2009-2013 Forecast (IDC #221346)

4. Determined using AMD’s Power Calculator with the following inputs: 35W AMD Opteron™ 4100 Series Processor versus 40W Intel Xeon 5600 Series Processor; 3 year server lifecycle; 100 servers; 4 DIMMs of memory; $0.11 Kwh rate; and a cooling factor of 60%.  The Power Calculator can be found at http://sites.amd.com/us/mod/tools/Pages/server-power-estimator.aspx

Gianluca Degliesposti is the vice president of Global Server Business Development for Acer Group.  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 many IT managers don’t realize is the extent to which memory can impact the overall energy envelope – particularly with virtualization and cloud computing infrastructures.

Samsung’s 40nm class, 2Gb, 1.35V DDR3 offers one of the most advanced, scalable memory solutions for new server architectures today. Providing an approximate 73% saving in power compared to conventional DRAM (DDR2), Samsung Green DDR3 memory is fast becoming the a widely adopted low-power solution for data centers.

We’ve seen that dramatic power savings at the module level can translate into an overall system power improvement ranging from a 38% higher power savings to as high as 50% in some applications. This not only makes a huge dent in the TCO for servers, but also helps to significantly curb data center CO2 emissions.

Samsung 40nm class, 2Gb, 1.35V DDR3 and its 100GB Enterprise SSD have been optimized to be fully compatible with both the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor, which is the industry’s first 8-core and 12-core x86 processor for high-volume 2P and 4P servers, and the just announced AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor, which is highly energy-efficient and designed for cloud and hyperscale server applications.  Together with the newest AMD Opteron processors, Samsung Green DDR3 and Green SSD work to provide the user an extremely compelling, performance-enhancing server infrastructure for today’s large data centers, as well as SMB.

On the storage side, Samsung SSDs use up to 60 percent less power than the hard disk drives commonly found in data centers today.  Also in terms of IOPS, a high speed SSD does its job 41 times faster than an enterprise HDD according to our studies, accessing up to 80 times more IOPS than a typical 15K rpm HDD. Also, Samsung SSDs can access up to nearly 250 times more IOPS per watt than a traditional 15K rpm HDD.  Moreover, a single SSD can replace many HDDs for optimal space utilization.  In some high-performance enterprise applications, a single SSD can replace anywhere from 4 to 40 HDDs, due to the SSDs performance advantages.

The path to continuous optimization does not stop here. Our newest low-voltage DDR3 – a 4Gb chip – will further push power savings down by as much as 83%.  We are gearing up for volume 4Gb production to accommodate expected deployments for the new AMD Opteron 4000 Series platform. Higher density Samsung Green SSDs are also expected shortly.  For more information, please go to www.Samsung.com/DDR3 or www.Samsung.com/SSD

Sylvie Kadivar is the director of Strategic DRAM Marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. 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.

Samsung Electronics states that the data points provided in this blog are the result of specific measurements made in actual testing conducted by Samsung in 2009.

For example, with its space saving micro-ATX form factor, the Supermicro H8SCM 1P Socket-C32 server board is compact enough to excel in mini-1U chassis environments yet also flexible enough to power full size rack and pedestal servers. This board packs an impressive set of features, including optimization for the newest AMD Opteron 4100 Series processors and up to 64GB of registered ECC DDR3 memory in 4 DIMM slots, dual GbE LAN ports, four PCI-Express 2.0 expansion slots, and support for up to six SATA drives with RAID 0, 1, 10 and up to seven USB 2.0 ports.

One of the things that sets Supermicro apart is that our innovation extends from server boards to complete systems and today, we’re also expanding our lineup of Socket C32-based servers.

The short-depth 1012C-MRF server is powered by the H8SCM-F.  With a depth of just 14.5”, this cost-effective server features one PCI-E 2.0 x16 expansion slot, two internal SATA drive bays, one DVD-ROM, two GbE LAN ports and one dedicated LAN for IPMI 2.0 remote system management.  Featuring a 350-watt Gold Level (93%+) Supermicro power supply, the compact 1012C-MRF delivers maximum power savings and value.

The 1022TC-IBQF and 1022TC-TF are based on the award-winning Supermicro 1U Twin™ system architecture, which enables two dual-processor (DP) server nodes in a 1U chassis.  Our twin systems offer amazing consolidation options and we are seeing a substantial part of the market move to dense environments and as they do so, power efficiency becomes even more important.  One innovation is that we’ve arranged the two DP nodes to share a 920-watt Platinum Level (94%+) Supermicro power supply to provide the ultimate in system power efficiency and energy savings.  While the 1022TC-TF is a cost-optimized solution, the 1022TC-IBQF provides high-performance features like the onboard 40Gb/s QDR InfiniBand ports for high-speed connectivity.

To get additional information on these products, be sure to visit us at www.supermicro.com.

Don Clegg is vice president of Marketing for Super Micro Computer, Inc. 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.

¹As of June 8, 2010, AMD Opteron™ processor Models 4162 EE and 4164 EE have the lowest known power per core of any server processor, at 5.83W (35W/6 = 5.83W/core). Intel’s L5609 is 10W/core (40W/4 cores). See http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/products/server/processor/xeon5000/specifications

Of course, one size does not fit all: the balance of server energy efficiency, density and performance required to optimize total cost of ownership can vary dramatically by customer.  At ZT Systems, we combine leading edge technologies like the AMD Opteron 4100 Series EE processor with industry-standard components to design platforms that are unique to each customer’s requirements – yielding custom solutions with compelling benefits relative to off-the-shelf servers.

ZT’s process begins with deep engineering engagement with clients to understand their server workloads and energy/thermal constraints at the rack and data center level.  We then design and produce custom platforms that best meet the customer’s needs, plus delivery solutions to ensure their servers (or pre-cabled racks) are deployed, provisioned and making money as quickly and efficiently as possible.   And since we’re an agile, private company with stateside manufacturing, ZT is able to do this very rapidly, with a level of flexibility most large customers are unaccustomed to.

It’s a “precision-fit” approach to providing data centers exactly what they need and nothing they don’t, enabling substantial capital and operational cost savings – without the worry of being boxed in to an expensive proprietary solution.  Learn more at www.ztsystems.com/amddatacenter.

Travis Scott is Director of Marketing at ZT Systems. 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.

*as of June 2, 2010

**SPEC and the benchmark name SPECpower_ssj are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. Benchmark results stated above reflect results published on http://www.spec.org as of June 23, 2010. For the latest SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark results, visit http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/results/power_ssj2008.html

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.

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 Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 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.

When Quad-Core AMD Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 2419 EE processor-based servers, you see that servers using this new low-power processor are outperforming servers using the Quad-Core AMD Opteron^TM processor Model 2384. That’s pretty impressive.

And the energy savings from using low-power Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM EE processors (compared to 75W ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM processors) are significant. When we replaced the 75W ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM processors in a ZT Systems server with 40W ACP Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM EE processors, server power consumption at 100% load dropped by 124W (40%).

Surpassing the performance of Quad-Core AMD Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM processor Model 2419 EE is being offered at the same price that the Quad-Core AMD Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM 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 Virtualization^TM (AMD-V^TM) technology and AMD Opteron^TM 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 Opteron^TM processor Model 2384 reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com as of November 2008. Pricing for Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM processor Model 2419 EE reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com as of August 2009.

Back in April, when we introduced the Quad-Core AMD Opteron^TM EE processors, Gordon Haff of Illuminata had this to say in his blog:

“Opteron EE is therefore not just your basic low-end-of-the-frequency-scale parts. Rather, they’re explicitly targeted for cloud computing and Web 2.0-in other words, the type of uses and customers who explicitly value power efficiency.”

Gordon points out that these processors are “not simply the fall-outs at the low end of the frequency range as lower power processors have often been historically.”  We are specifically targeting low power consumption because we understand the power needs that customers have. We understand the environments and are targeting processors to meet those needs.

Those quad-core processors that were launched in April have an ACP of 40 watts, so if you do the very simple “watts per core” math (ACP / cores) you have ~10W per core.  Of course that is not a scientific measurement (that would require much more complex testing because the simple math does not comprehend that there are components besides the cores in the processor).

Now, today, we introduce new Six-Core AMD Opteron EE processors that have the same 40W ACP.  Again, the simple math says 40W ACP / 6 cores = ~6.67W per core.  Does anyone remember the world before AMD introduced the first AMD Opteron processor?

Server state-of-the-art, B.O. (Before AMD Opteron), was Prestonia, a single core processor with configurations of up to 58W max TDP just one core!  A mere six years later, the new Six-Core AMD Opteron EE processors have six times the number of cores and dramatically lower power per core.     

We really have come a long way, with as much as 58 watts of power for a single core (2.0GHz), to today’s new standard of single digit ACP per core. With the shorter pipelines and better efficiency of today’s AMD Opteron processors, I am guessing that a single 2GHz Opteron core is going to be much more efficient than the legacy NetBurst cores in Prestonia, and the fact that the power is so much lower means that we are really heading in the right direction.

Next year, we plan to introduce the “San Marino” platform, featuring our “Lisbon” (C32) processor.  We expect to have a platform that is specifically tuned to the needs of these very low power environments.  It may not be a stretch to say that with next year’s optimized platforms, we may be able to provide even lower total power consumption than we see today with these AMD Opteron EE processor-based platforms.

Now, the question is “how low can you go?”  Well, only the future will know.  Well, that and our design engineers.

If you’re interested in a deeper dive on our Six-Core AMD Opteron EE processor, check out the presentation below.

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.

Like many of you, I have a second job as the network administrator for a small network – at home.  The pay is non-existent but the working conditions are flexible. We all come home from our jobs, and as the de facto technical person in the house, it is my responsibility to keep it all running.

Over time I have managed to assign 16 different IP addresses on my home network. Consolidating print services on to a NAS allowed me to retire one print server this weekend, simplicity reigns supreme. When everything runs fine, it is a well oiled machine; but it generally always chooses the day I have just left for Asia to come tumbling down.

Here is what I grapple with when I get home at night:

The complexity of the network has grown over the years.  The first server was NetWare 3.11, followed by Windows NT Server.  Eventually it simply became Windows Vista on the server, again, in the need for simplicity and commonality with the other OS’s (and not needing an enterprise-class OS at home.)

What I have noticed about the network is that everything is purpose-driven.  There isn’t anything that has just been added for the heck of it.  I scrutinize IT purchases just like you, because they add complexity to my life.

Commonality is really important.  The 2 NAS devices (one for data, one as a mirror backup) are identical models with the same drive models. Disaster recovery is simply changing the IP from the primary to the secondary.

I shoot for commonality on the motherboards so that when I have to update drivers, I can take care of all of those chores at one time.  It’s funny that I talk to customers all the time who talk about the importance of commonality in their data centers, and even on a personal level, on a home network, it makes sense. They love the commonality of the platforms based on AMD Opteron^TM processors and I can see why. Being able to count on the same driver to update different generations of AMD-based servers is a huge reduction in the amount of time spent managing the update process.

This past weekend I decided to build up another system and load Windows Home Server to see how the experience was.  Deploying a new server, especially one with a new technology is always a challenge.

I am adding this server because I want to be able to allow my wife to have a universal file storage – with remote file editing (without having to deal with “upload/download.”)  If I can figure out how to enable this functionality on the current system, then I would probably want to consolidate some of the functions with an HP MediaSmart Server because I really love that compact form factor.

Working with the WHS software presented an interesting challenge when it came to power consumption.  The software is based on Windows Server 2003 but it was not very clear which drivers you need for power savings.  I have the whole system around 45W in idle (where is sits most of the day), which is probably about $.10 a day in power (it consumes roughly a kilowatt hour and we pay ~$.10/KwH here in Austin). While that might not seem like a lot, consolidating down to the HP system would hopefully drop the consumption even more.

Walking around the house with a power meter, and doing some quick math, it looks like the network is drawing ~$10/month in power (based on that rough estimate of $.10/KwH).  Sleep mode helps cut that number down a bit, but don’t let it fool you, even when sleeping, devices are pulling power.

The lessons I learned this weekend probably sound very similar to what you deal with:

1. Commonality is good

2. Consolidation reduces your management tasks

3. Software is never as easy as it appears

4. Power efficiency is very critical

Hopefully, by spending some time with WHS I can build the application that I need and then can consolidate some of the functions down to 1 box. Ah, the life of a network administrator.

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.

This week I am hearing a lot about the “cash for clunkers” program here in the US, where older cars can be traded in for newer more fuel efficient vehicles, with the government kicking in some rebate dollars to make it all happen if you are buying a more fuel efficient vehicle.  I’m not going to even pretend to think about this from a political sense (there is a reason I chose product marketing and not politics), but, from a business sense, this sort of activity is happening in data centers all over the world.  Even without the government assistance.

Are people changing out servers just to drive more efficiency?  Hardly.  But in a tough economy, they think about optimization, they think about efficiency and they think about virtualization when they have to make a change.

As customers look to pull the plug on older servers that are past their useful life -- either through warranty or lease expiration, or potentially due to a hardware failure that is too costly to repair -- they are looking to more power efficient servers as well as virtualization to solve their future computing challenges.

The migration to a new platform is costly, time consuming and full of interesting challenges. One way to overcome some of these challenges is to use virtualization to encapsulate the server, creating a virtual machine.  With the system image (software) now physically abstracted from the hardware, it can be moved anywhere around the data center, or around the world.

This new level of abstraction is great, but one of the real challenges is that a virtual machine has to take the “lowest common denominator” in order to move between two systems.  The flexibility to move virtual machines around, at will, is dependent on the underlying hardware.

AMD has designed an amazing consistency in our architectural design, allowing a server to have backwards and forwards consistency in moving virtual machines -- a feat that is much more challenging on other’s platforms unless you really scale the virtual machine back to a very simple configuration.

Here, we actually demonstrate taking a virtual machine from an old dual core, to a newer six-core platform, and then move that virtual machine to our future AMD Opteron^TM 6000 processor-based platform.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEmqz0SYmTg

As you look to optimize your data center, utilizing AMD Opteron processors can help keep your environment humming along, with the ability to load balance and drive incredible efficiency through virtualization.  The fact that we can deliver such flexibility across the board shows that AMD understands the challenges that you face, and we tailor our products to meet those needs.

Not only can we help you drive better efficiency by moving from older AMD platforms to AMD’s newer, more power efficient platforms, but our common socket strategy allows many of the AMD Opteron^TM based-platforms to be easily upgraded from dual core to quad core, or even six core, virtually without having to change out any other hardware. It’s an instant upgrade in performance, all within the same general power and thermal ranges.

These are just two more ways that AMD is helping you drive more efficiency in the data center.  Maybe we can’t hand back “cash for clunkers”, but we can help get you back on the road to recovery, and that’s where we all want to be these days.

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.

First, let’s take a closer look at how IT managers are actually using four-socket servers. It’s very rare for four-socket servers to be used strictly as a way to increase compute density. Appro and SGI have twin servers and half-depth servers to serve this purpose. In most cases, four-socket servers are used for applications that require a single server to have access to large amounts of memory. These applications typically consist of database, virtualization/consolidation, and some high performance computing applications. With the ability to support 32 memory DIMMs per server, optimized virtualization features such as AMD Virtualization^TM (AMD-V^TM) technology, and unique energy efficiency features (AMD-P), Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM 8400 series processors are ideal for these applications.

When comparing the feature sets of Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM 8400 series processors and Intel Xeon 7400 series (“Dunnington”) processors, the feature set consistency of the AMD Opteron^TM 8400 series processors is in stark contrast to the Intel Xeon 7400 series offerings. Four items about the Xeon 7400 series stand out:

• The feature set differs dramatically between each of the seven models in the Xeon 7400 series
• No Xeon 7400 series processor includes RVI or Tagged TLB virtualization features
• The low-power Xeon L7445 and L7455 do NOT include the same energy efficiency features as the highest performance Xeon X7460
• All Xeon 7400 series processors use Fully Buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory

The feature set consistency of the AMD Opteron^TM 8400 series processors gives customers a more predictable approach to data center planning and helps capacity planning, software image development, and validation efforts.

What about the performance and value of servers using these processors? If servers using Intel processors are clearly superior, then the differing feature sets won’t matter, right?

While the 46% VMmark performance advantage that a four-socket AMD Opteron^TM 8400 series processor-based server has over the top-performing four-socket Intel Xeon 7400 series processor-based server is impressive, I think that the performance of energy efficient Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM 8425 HE processor-based servers is even more impressive. This comparison shows that, depending on benchmark, a server using low-power Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM processors can provide nearly double the server performance of a server using low-power Hex-Core Intel Xeon L7455 processors at nearly half the processor price. Servers using low-power Six-Core AMD Opteron^TM 8425 HE processors even significantly outperform servers using the highest performance, highest power Hex Core Intel Xeon X7460 processors, again at nearly half the processor price.

When combined, all of these advantages (superior performance, energy efficiency, virtualization features, and pricing) make the Six-Core AMD Opteron 8400 series processors the ideal solution for four-socket servers.

Now, let’s go back to my original analogy about the hybrid SUV. In theory, the reason that people buy an SUV is because they need to move a lot of stuff, whether that’s people, groceries, or furniture. It’s the same way with four-socket servers – people buy a four-socket server because they need lots of memory to process lots of stuff, whether that’s database applications, virtualization/consolidation, or processing large datasets in high performance computing applications. Why shouldn’t you able to process lots of “stuff” and get energy efficiency too?

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.

Truthfully, 100F translates to ~37C or so, which is very close to the 35C spec that is so common in the computer industry.  We spec our processors to run at a maximum temperature of 35C, which means that there is a lot of heat being generated inside those boxes.  Blades, twins and 1U servers aren’t helping the situation because their form factors are driving greater heat density.

Many are starting to investigate things like liquid cooling racks or other proprietary schemes to drive lower temperatures.  The reason for this is that the chillers used to keep the server room at a lower temperature are very expensive.

Everyone is trying to avoid “the million dollar server.” That is the last server that breaks the camel’s back and forces you to upgrade the AC units. Power is generally a continuum – add another server and your cost go up marginally (as long as you don’t need to pull another circuit to the rack.)

But with cooling, it is not quite as linear.  There is both a variable cost for each server, as well as a large step-function jump when you have to add new equipment.

The two big challenges that are hitting the data center when it comes to cooling the data center with proprietary methods are cost and risk.

Cost is always a driver with any type of proprietary system.  It will be a driver until the system hits critical mass.  Even then, if there are complicated manufacturing methods, even widespread market adoption might not drive the cost curve down fast enough.  If some proprietary intellectual property is included in the system, expect royalties to continue to take their bite.

The other factor is risk, but it is not risk in the classic sense.  It is the risk of making the wrong decision.  If you choose the new technology too early, you might miss some innovation that helps drive the cost down somewhat.  And if you guess wrong, well, we don’t need to say how that story ends, we’ve all see the movie.

Cost and risk are driving a lot of customers to investigate more non-standard cooling technologies, but that process is not happening fast enough for some companies. Air cooling is not only the traditional method, but even with new technology, it remains the predominant method.

I’m very interested in your cooling strategies.  Post a comment with what you are doing to combat “global warming” in your own environment.

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.

With lots of time to kill, I have been thinking about designing for power efficiency.  The latest generation of server processors are definitely designed to focus on the energy efficiency needs of the data center, but how do companies go about doing this? Is it all the same?

I took a look at a recent article at Tech Report.com that highlights, amongst other things, some power efficiency calculations they performed on both our latest six-core AMD Opteron^TM processor and our competitor’s latest release. These are Tech Report’s test  results – I haven’t had the time or the opportunity to recreate the tests in my own lab, but I trust their methodology, and believe these results are reasonable and accurate.

One thing to note is that in all of the numbers below, we are looking at our six cores versus our competitor’s four cores, so from a core count, when it comes to power, we have a “hand tied behind our backs” with 50% more cores drawing power. Plus, they configured the competitor’s system with 6 DIMMs vs. our 8 DIMMs.

One of the most striking points, according to Tech Report, is that our six core platform and their four core platform both idle at approximately the same level – our 154W to their 153W. 2 extra cores for only 1 watt, what a great deal.

However, the platforms diverge when you add the slightest load. With only a 2% load, we moved from 154W to 158W, not a large delta at all.  Our competitor, however, jumped from 153W to 186W. That is a pretty dramatic jump in power consumption.  If you consider that throughout the course of a day (even a long one like today), the processors will jump back and forth between idle and light loads quite often. Having a low idle power on a server is like having low gas consumption on a car in idle.  Eventually you are going to want to get somewhere; people don’t buy cars to sit on their driveways.

Based on my interactions with customers, I’ve found that most IT managers believe that their average CPU utilization is ~15-20%.  This means the processors are probably spending a lot of time over the course of the day going in and out of idle.  So these small jumps in utilization could mean big jumps in power consumption, all depending on whether you make the right processor choice of course.

Peak power is another story.  Our peak power in the Tech Report article was 278W, quite respectable for a system with 12 total cores. Our competitor’s Nehalem-based system pulled 330W at the wall when in peak load.  52 watts is a lot of power, and if you are running virtualization or an HPC cluster, where high utilization is the profile, then you are really limiting yourself by not choosing these AMD Opteron processors.

Data center floor space is expensive, probably the most expensive area in all of your facilities. Those extra 52 watts add up quickly.  With a 1200KVA power budget per rack you could fit 42 1U AMD Opteron processor-based platforms, or only 36 competing 1U servers. That means potentially wasting almost 15% of the space in each rack.  Meaning more racks, and more valuable floor space consumed.

It’s not enough to say that you design processors for energy efficiency.  You have to optimize across the whole range of utilization levels.  Only then can you be sure that whether you are dealing with a low level of utilization or a highly utilized server that you are getting the most for your money.  No matter how long your day is.

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.

Just this past week, we saw that there is still a lot of volatility in the memory market, and memory is a commodity that has a huge impact on the price of a server.

For instance, taking a quick look at Crucial (http://www.crucial.com) shows that in comparing the prices of 2GB and 4GB DIMMs, there is still a pretty substantial premium on DDR-3.

(pricing for single DIMM SKUs, as of 7/09/09 at http://www.crucial.com)

For customers buying servers, memory is often the most expensive part of the system. With four and eight DIMMs per socket, you can easily see the price differential rocket upward as the system requirements grow.

Where desktops generally use 2GB of memory or 4GB for more power users (Windows Vista 32-bit only sees about 3GB), in the server space we are talking about 16GB as the minimal point of entry and 32GB as a common configuration.  Couple this with the more expensive registered, ECC memory that servers demand, and you can start to feel the pain in your budget.

By utilizing the energy-efficient DDR-2 memory, AMD Opteron^TM processor-based platforms can take advantage of the economies of scale as they grow the memory capacity on their servers to meet the needs of the business.

Next year, when the DDR-3 memory prices for server memory have likely started to drop out of the stratosphere and down into a reasonable range, we’re planning for our Q1 2010 platform, codenamed “Maranello”, to go to market with support for DDR-3 memory.  And, more importantly, low voltage DDR-3 memory.  The low voltage offerings, along with these anticipated lower prices, should make DDR-3 the smart choice for server customers.

So, while the cost of migrating a desktop from DDR-2 to DDR-3 is becoming reasonable for many customers, we still have a long way to go before DDR-3 has similar economic advantages for the server market.

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.

At this time last year, the most energy efficient AMD Opteron^TM processor-based server (based on the SPECpower^TM_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 (4x4GB 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.  

The AMD Opteron 1000 Series processor is designed for applications that are driven by cost or power concerns more than scalability.  In the past, this meant a single core in a single socket, but in today’s multi-core world, this means four high performance cores in a single socket.

Typically, these processors are used in web servers, small business servers, workstations and even cloud computing.  The flexibility of four cores and a low cost infrastructure gives customers an edge when designing for a cost-effective or power efficient platform.   

With speeds of 2.5GHz, 2.7GHz and 2.9GHz, these single-socket processors pack a punch. It’s based on the same core as the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor codenamed “Shanghai,” so all the great features that you find in “Shanghai” are also in “Suzuka.”

One of the best parts about my job is that I have access to all the processors that I could ever want for testing.  My server at home migrated from a dual-core AMD Opteron Model 185 processor to a new system board with a quad-core “Budapest,” which is a 2.3GHz processor based on the same core as “Barcelona.”

Recently, I upgraded that server to a pre-production “Suzuka.” I went from a 2.3GHz quad-core with a 2MB cache to a 2.9GHz quad-core processor with a 6MB cache.  I saw an increase in performance, but amazingly, because Suzuka is on AMD’s 45nm process, I actually saw a decrease in total server power draw of about 10 watts. A performance increase, a big drop in power consumption – that makes the performance per watt story even better.

All I needed was a BIOS flash – the processor just dropped right into the same AM2 socket. The entire process was 5 minutes, and that included digging around under the sink to find some rubbing alcohol to clean the thermal paste off of the old processor. This incidentally, was the same process that you would have to go through in updating from a Rev F dual core processor to a “Budapest.”

Many may not know that our code names are derived from Formula 1 race tracks. Suzuka is a race course in Japan; recently it had been renovated and was re-opened in April of this year, just about the same time that we were finishing up the final touches and releasing our own “Suzuka.”

One of the biggest races at Suzuka is the 1000Km endurance race.  A 1000 kilometer race?  Sounds like the perfect compliment for an AMD Opteron 1000 Series processor.  Both are designed for the long haul.

 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.

Have you ever seen one of those movies where the heroes realize that they don’t have enough fuel to make it to their destination? In the mad panic they start throwing everything out of the vehicle to try to lighten up the load so they can get better fuel efficiency and hopefully make it to the finish line.

Yes, some people actually approach processor design that way. They build a big, fat die, and then as an afterthought, to get any efficient processor, they “dumb down” the design. Strip out features. Restrict the performance. Reduce the capabilities.

We don’t do this.

The new AMD Opteron EE processors have all the features and capabilities of our other processors. As a matter of fact, if you were to run the same benchmark on the 2.3GHz standard power, 2.3GHz HE and 2.3GHz EE, they will all perform exactly the same; except at the wall.

The HE will draw less power that the standard and the EE will draw even less than the HE.

How do we drive such low energy consumption without compromising features? It’s in the genes. A great silicon design, combined with a very well-behaved 45nm process allows us to yield enough ultra-efficient EE parts that we can build a business on it.

If you are counting the watts in your data center, here are 2 numbers to keep in mind:  185 and 115.  In testing at AMD, a 2P server platform with EE processors idled at an amazing 115 watts of power.  And at full 100% load, it only hit 185 watts.  So if you were building a 42U rack with 42 of these 1U servers, your total power budget would be under 8KW.  Typically the customers I talk to these days are worried about 10-12KW loads per rack in their data center, and often they aren’t loaded floor to ceiling with servers because they max out their power load.  These new processors change the game – dramatically.

So where will you see these processors?  Take a look up into the clouds.

Typically 2P 2U servers, the “bread and butter” of the data center, use the high performance SE and standard power bands.  Dense 1U rack servers take advantage of the low power HE processors.  And ultra-dense environments, like cloud computing and web hosting, tend to have multiple system boards in a single chassis, so the extremely efficient EE processor is a good match.  These environments often have custom systems engineered rather than buying “off the shelf” systems, so you’ll see EE processors more in these custom designs than in stock configurations.

The genes of the Shanghai processor – highly optimized for energy efficiency, as well as outstanding performance – and careful nurturing in a state of the art 45nm fab, combine to give AMD a significant advantage when delivering low power performance to the data center.

So don’t look for what isn’t in there to figure out how we are driving such an efficient design, look at what IS in there, a pedigree with a long history of efficient design.  And nothing taken out; no compromises, the way it should be.

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.

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.

In light of this debate, I also talked last week with Graham Lovell at Sun -- one of our technology partners. (You can watch a bit of our conversation below.) Graham is the director of Open Storage and let me tell you, he gets it.  Their Amber Road product line has effectively addressed the important issues that customers can face in determining the storage component of a data center strategy – specifically the need to have highly scalable storage capacity on a high performing network  - storage that is simple to manage and power efficient.  Interesting how storage and server requirements are converging these days.

It seems the tide has been turning a bit in the storage world and there’s a lot more to consider now beyond the “classical” fail-safe back-up.  There are synergies to be had by looking at the overall server/storage/software/virtualization equation.  Sun’s delivered a product line that takes a building block approach to integrating the crucial storage element because that’s the direction the IT managers and the businesses they support are going.  Simple as that.  (Take a look at the massive Internet Archive project which is using AMD Opteron™ processor-based storage in a Sun Modular Datacenter.)

There will likely always be a place for the more traditional back office systems.  But expensive implementations based on proprietary technology and that don’t readily mesh with the increasing need for quick, local, on-demand storage arguably aren’t the best fit given the direction our customers are going.

With more customers looking to virtualization to solve their IT needs, consolidation of storage is likely going to be that “critical first step” in getting the most out of a virtualized environment. Flexibility becomes more important and products like Sun’s Amber Road, built on AMD Opteron processor technology, help drive the right solutions.

Delivering technology that lets you build what you need, when you need it and do so with maximum efficiency -- that still sounds like the right way to go.  I can’t see a future where that doesn’t make sense.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DuswZrVcj4

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 helped our new server processor take off? Two clear things:  innovation and a market hungry for change.  But how is that appetite today?

Understanding the market dynamic, and more importantly, the customer needs, is critical with any new product.   In 1999 millions of servers were replaced due to Y2K, so in 2003, there was a natural inflection point in the market as those servers reached their traditional lifecycles.  The economy was strong and people were open to the idea of something new. But it isn’t always like that.

Today’s economy is helping turn up the contrast on changes in the data center; more importantly, in regards to unnecessary changes, which are not viewed as positively by customers.

Take for instance the migration to DDR-3 memory.  Next year, when DDR-3 memory is expected to drop in price, you will have access to lower latency, lower cost and lower power memory.  At that time, DDR-3 could represent a savings and value to you.  Today, however, DDR-3 has higher cost, higher power consumption and higher latency.  Change can be good, but only if change is to something better. (EETimes has a strong opinion about this.) If you are struggling to make the most of your IT budget, expensive memory, which can represent up to 50% (or more) of the cost of a server, is not a good idea.

When IT staffs are being cut back and resources are being stretched to their limits, platform stability has a comparatively higher value.  New image management and more complex systems typically mean more resources required to deploy and manage the systems, something many organizations just can’t justify in today’s tight economy.

AMD’s platform strategy is built around longevity, not churn.  Our stability means that you can get more value out of the systems that you deploy because the ROI over the life of the server can be higher. 

We plan for our customers to be able to transition their purchases to “Istanbul” processors later this year, allowing them to move to the measurable benefits we offer with 6-core processing, yet still maintain the same platforms and images that they have on today’s “Shanghai”-based systems. (Watch a live migration video.)  Service spares don’t have to change.  IT teams don’t need to be trained on new systems. Customers don’t need to spend extra dollars outside of the hardware in order to take advantage of the new platforms. Managing the new “Istanbul” system will be virtually identical to managing the “Shanghai” system, with the same BIOS, drivers, and management interfaces.  This means you get the benefit of change, without the extra baggage.

And in today’s economy, who can afford the baggage?

 Update – It looks like I am not the only one saying this, CRN readers feel the same way:  http://www.crn.com/hardware/216402221

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 Recovery Act of 2009 includes a number of measures to increase energy efficiency in the U.S., which many feel is the fastest and cheapest way to address the nation’s energy challenges – from homes to factories and offices. And while the government spends billions to build a better, bigger and smarter electric grid, there are a number of ways that companies and organizations can increase their energy efficiency in the short-term. Let’s consider the commercial airline industry for a moment.

 When killing time at the airport before your flight, have you ever pondered the number of arrival and departure screens you’ve passed between the check-in counter, security and your flight gate? McCarron International Airport in Las Vegas, ranked 14th in the world for passenger traffic in 2007, with nearly 48 million passengers, boasts more than 750 flight information monitors.

Typically, flight information displays are powered by a computer equipped with a video card or a graphics card, which enables the system to power multiple monitors at once.  Both the card and the computer consume energy and emit heat, as wells the display, and contribute to the airports carbon footprint.  And in the heat of the summer in Las Vegas, all of these systems and the millions of passengers require the airport to crank up the AC.

So, theoretically at least, how can these airports save money and increase energy efficiency? Because older computers and graphics cards draw more power and emit more heat, buying smaller more energy efficient PCs and more powerful and energy efficient graphics cards will help reduce energy and cooling costs and reduce carbon emissions.  The new ATI FirePro™ 2450 multi-view graphics card from AMD can power up to four monitors at one time, fits in newer and smaller form factor computers and only sips a cool 18 watts of power – the same amount of electricity as a CFC light bulb.

According to Wikipedia, as of June 2008, there were 49,024 airports in the world with the U.S. having more than any other country – more than 14,000. While not all of these airports are of the caliber of Las Vegas, Denver or Dallas/Fort Worth, each state has at least one large commercial airport. If McCarron alone has 750 displays, the number of displays in this country’s airports alone is mind-boggling.  You have to wonder just how much energy is wasted each day.

The commercial airline industry is just one example of how multiple display technology touches your life. What about:

·         911 emergency data centers

·         Trading floors of the stock and commodity exchanges – most analysts and traders have 2 to 4 displays on their desk

·         Manufacturing assembly lines

·         Power plants

·         The electrical grid

·         Television stations

The next time you are waiting for your flight, I encourage you to consider how much energy could be conserved if a fraction of airports, factories and businesses in the U.S. and the world at large implemented more energy efficient technologies. A little effort would definitely go a long way. 

 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.

Janet Matsuda is Senior Director, Professional Graphics at AMD.