www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNrBavjByfw

We made a lot of strategic decisions when introducing this server platform earlier this year. Let us know what you think are the most important technical priorities in server processors today.

Reminder – the final clue in our 12 Days of 12 Core will be posted tomorrow for a chance to win a Toshiba Satellite A505D-S6987 laptop (don’t forget to Check out the rules here).

Jason Deal is a PR 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.

The addition of the IBM server rounds out a strong and diverse portfolio:  45 unique AMD Opteron^TM 6100 Series-based platforms are expected to be available by the end of this year, which demonstrates that our  “more cores, more memory for less money” argument is a compelling one for partners and customers alike.  And we anticipate that the 6100 Series portfolio will be joined by close to 30 new AMD Opteron^TM 4100 Series platforms.

Because we don’t subscribe to the theory, “there can be only one”…

We’re sometimes asked why we delivered both processor families, and it’s pretty simple.  The AMD Opteron^TM 6100 Series is our performance leader, with the added benefit that we broke the “4P tax” – now you don’t have to pay extra for 4P-capable processors.  But this year we’ve seen a fast increase in demand from the cloud market, as the volume of that segment ramped up quickly in the second quarter.  Creating the AMD Opteron^TM 4100 Series allowed us to deliver our first $99 server processor, with a power draw as low as 6 watts per core.   That price, performance and power combination makes it a great solution for cloud markets, while the low price meets the buying criteria of our SMB customers.  Win!

Our new platforms are industry game changers, and are bringing back the advantages you’re used to seeing from AMD – not just price / performance, but pure performance, low price, and low power consumption.  Which means more opportunity for you in finding the best platform, at the right price.

The even better news is that the next twelve months look just as bright. We talked at length about our upcoming “Bulldozer” and “Bobcat” architectures at Hot Chips 22 a few weeks ago, which got an outstanding reception from both show attendees and the press.  “Bobcat” and “Bulldozer,” brand-new ground-up core architectures from AMD, are central to our roadmap for 2011 – and yet another step in bringing the right innovation to you.  You’ll see “Bulldozer” in server products and high-end client products in 2011 and “Bobcat” cores will be central to low power client products like notebooks and small form factor PCs.

Next week is another big one as the industry descends on San Francisco. We’ll be there in force – watch out for what should prove to be some interesting conversations around the server space.

Steve Cumings is Director of World Wide Server Market Development 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.

Dylan had it right in 1963 when he recorded this classic that some say captured the spirit of social and political unrest of the times.  Today, the times certainly are a-changin’, especially when it comes to the computing power of x86 servers.  The role of x86 servers in the world of enterprise IT continues to grow.  In fact, according to an IDC report, the first quarter of 2010 experienced the fastest year-over-year revenue growth for x86 servers in more than 10 years.  Virtualization, once a niche technology is growing more pervasive in today’s datacenters. 

Servers based on x86 technology are equipped with unprecedented amounts of I/O and memory capacity.  The latest AMD Opteron™ 6000 series platform (formerly known by the code name “Magny-Cours”) is based on the AMD Direct Connect Architecture 2.0.  The platform now boasts up to 12 cores per processor, supports up to two times the memory and I/O bandwidth of the previous generation Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor and includes AMD-V™ I/O Virtualization technology in the chipset.  

With all the advancements in virtualization technology over the past few years, it appears we’re ready to tackle what some are calling the third leg of server virtualization – the network.  A great example of this is HP’s latest release of Virtual Connect Flex-10 networking adapters for the HP ProLiant BladeSystem, and VMware vSphere vNetwork Distributed Switch feature.  HP’s Virtual Connect Flex-10 is hardware-based I/O technology that enables you to partition a 10Gb Ethernet connection into four virtual connections and fine-tune the bandwidth of each of those connections.

Virtual Network Design

We’ve seen how virtualization has changed the way servers are designed, and we are now seeing virtualization change the way networks are designed.  In the world of virtualization, a physical server hosts many virtual servers, which can now communicate with multiple virtual network interface controllers (NICs).   Virtual switches contained within the physical server extend the network infrastructure beyond the physical NIC which creates a virtual network infrastructure – all of which must be managed and tuned.

Enter HP Virtual Connect Flex-10.  Virtual Connect Flex-10 defines a physical end-point to the network infrastructure and allows a server administrator to control the assignment of virtual networks (or VLANS) to the physical NICs inside the BladeSystem.  This Virtual Connect end-point clearly separates the role of the server administrator from the role of the network administrator. The network administrator provisions the network VLANs to the Virtual connect infrastructure and the server administrator connects the NICs to the appropriate network.

Virtual Connect works with VMware’s  vSphere 4.0 vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS).  vDS extends VMware’s legacy vSwitch technology with features that enable spanning multiple hosts with a single virtual switch.  vDS now treats the network as an aggregated resource. Individual, host-level virtual switches are abstracted into a single large vNetwork Distributed Switch that spans multiple hosts at the datacenter level.  While a vNetwork Distributed Switch can plug into any existing virtual infrastructure, HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 provides a mechanism for presenting consistent “networks” and VLANs to all hosts within the ESX cluster.

With vDS, VMware has also added a number of other new capabilities, not available with Standard Switches, that address emerging virtual network requirements.  A few of the more interesting features are:

• Private VLAN (PVLAN) enables users to restrict communication between virtual machines on the same VLAN or network segment which helps to address security concerns and help reduce the number of subnets needed for certain network configurations.
• Network VMotion tracks the virtual machine networking state as the VM moves from host to host on a vNetwork Distributed Switch providing a consistent view of a virtual network interface regardless of the VM location.
• Bi-directional Traffic Shaping helps users limit the traffic to or from a VM or group of VMs to protect a VM or other traffic in an oversubscribed network.

Software Licensing

With the introduction of vShpere 4.0, VMware introduced a new tiered licensing model.  Those of you looking at taking advantage of VMware’s vNetwork Distributed Switch will need to upgrade to vSphere Enterprise Plus. 

You can now enter into a new generation of Virtualization with technology like HP Virtual Connect Flex-10, vSphere vNetwork Distributed Switch and HP ProLiant BladeSystem servers equipped with AMD Opteron™ 6000 series processors – designed to deliver unprecedented price/performance, vastly improved manageability and decreased power and cooling costs.

 Are you considering network virtualization technology for your data center?

Also see John Fruehe’s blog “The Value 4P – Courtesy of the AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series Platform for an overview of the Magny-Cours platform, and check out my blog Understanding the Bigger Picture of VMmark Benchmarks for a review on the latest virtualization performance results.

Tim Mueting is a 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.

At AMD, we constantly hear from customers about different issues they are grappling with. It’s not to say that all customers face the same issues, but we certainly see a few common themes come up time and time again. Because of that, we thought it would be useful to start a “Best Practices” blog series that helps customers navigate these issues and understand the nuances of the server market. Let’s start first with virtualization benchmarks. There’s a lot more going on than what we see at the surface.

For example, the VMmark score of HP’s two-socket DL 385 G7 VMmark score (30.96) is evidence of the value of the architectural enhancements that the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors bring to the table for virtualization workloads.  This score certainly is impressive and highlights the performance benefits of “real cores” and additional memory channels (33 % more per processor than competitive 2P solutions). The  DL 385 G7 VMmark score slightly edges out the DL585 G6 – HP’s 24 core, 4P “Istanbul” processor-based server -   which received a score of 29.95.  In addition, the result of the DL 385 G7 is within 15% of Cisco’s UBS 250 M2 top score and within 10% of Fujitsu’s BX922 X2 score.  Both of these machines are based on Intel’s 3.33GHz, 130W Xeon model X5680 processors with 192GB of memory.  In comparison, the HP DL 385 G7 runs on a 2.3 GHz, 130 W AMD Opteron model 6176 SE with 128GB of memory.

But, like I said, this doesn’t quite tell the entire story. Take price, for instance (You can find AMD pricing here and Intel pricing here, as of May 13, 2010).  In this case, while we don’t have the retail prices of either the Cisco or Fujitsu systems, we can at least compare the price of the processors.  As you can see from the chart above, both of the Cisco and Fujitsu systems come with a premium of approximately $554 for the processors (2 processors x $277 more per processor).

Another issue to consider is that of memory.  The Fujitsu and Cisco systems use 33% more memory than the DL 385 G7 (192 GB for the Cisco and Fujitsu systems vs. 128 GB for the HP system.  Moreover, the memory used by the Fujitsu server maxes out the 12 available DIMM slots with 16GB DIMMs (a product which is not yet widely available, and can go for around $1500 per DIMM).

It’s also interesting to note how the Cisco and Fujitsu server scores varied even though they were based on the same processor and amount of memory.  I’m only speculating, but it may have something to do with Cisco’s proprietary Extended Memory Technology.

The folks at VMware have spent considerable time and effort in developing a virtualization benchmark that represents the relative performance of a server platform.  But as with many benchmarks, it doesn’t always represent real world scenarios.  VMmark, for example, was developed in 2006 when virtualization was focused on less robust applications.  We should also recognize that:

• VMmark VMs are very lightly loaded with minimal I/O.
• The VMs in VMmark are not very robust – using only 1 or 2 vCPUs per VM.
• The VMs in VMmark use very little memory – a maximum of 2GB for each VM.
• The goal of VMmark is to run as many virtual machines as possible on a single physical server.
• The individual workloads may not reflect what is typically running in the enterprise, nor do they stress the hypervisor.
• Customers still only run an average of 12 to 15 VMs on a single server as opposed to the 126 VMs used for the DL385 G7 publication. There have been many studies on this topic such as this one by SourceDataCenter, “The data center purchasing intentions.”

I’m sure a variety of OEMs will be posting more results very soon, but until then I think this gives us a great picture of where we are today.  Based on the results of the DL 385 G7, servers using the new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors can offer customers up to twice the virtualization performance as the previous generation processors (codenamed “Istanbul”) and one of the best price/performance values in the marketplace today.

Does this help answer your questions about measuring virtualization performance? What other questions can we answer?

Tim Mueting is a 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. 

*The results stated above reflect results published on http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.htmlhttp://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html as of April 27, as of April 27, 2010. The comparison presented above is based on the two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6176 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680. For the latest results, visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html.

*Configuration Information:

2 x AMD Opteron™processors Model 6176 SE (12-core 2.3GHz) in HP ProLiant DL385 G7 server, 128GB (16 x 8GB DDR3-1333) memory , VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-HP-2010-04-20-DL385G7.pdf

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz 130W TDP) in Cisco UCS B250 M2 server, 192GB (48 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory using Cisco Extended Memory Technology, VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-Cisco-2010-04-06-UCS-B250-M2.pdf

Cisco memory prices can be found at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/ps10265/ps10280/ps10300/white_paper_c11-525300.pdf

2 x Intel Xeon processors Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz 130W TDP) in Fujitsu BX922 S2 server, 192GB (12 x 16GB DDR3-1066) memory, VMware® ESX 4.0 Update 1, VMmark™ V1.1.1

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmmark/VMmark-Fujitsu-2010-04-06-BX922S2.pdf

*Fujitsu memory prices can be found at http://www.stockinthechannel.com/p/S26361-F3284-L525-16GB-DDR3-1066MHz-Memory-Modul-Fujitsu-memory-modules/1698619.aspx

From Business Intelligence to OLTP – More Cores Providing More Value for Database

In my “Sleepless in Seattle” blog I highlighted a recent performance evaluation published in AnandTech by Johan De Gelas that showcases AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform strength in a key application of database – Decision Support (also called Business Intelligence).

It’s time to take a look at some On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) numbers. Today we’re announcing two world-record TPC benchmark scores posted by HP for 2P servers running Microsoft® SQL Server® that demonstrate clear price/performance leadership for the AMD 6000 Series platform. In a nutshell, TPC-E and TPC-C measure transactional processing performance – crucial for databases. While we know performance is obviously important in this area, we believe the price/performance benefits are even more relevant. That’s giving customers the best of both worlds, in my opinion.

In the TPC-E benchmark test, an HP ProLiant DL385 G7 powered by AMD Opteron processor Model 6176 SE, running Windows Server® 2008 R2, and the brand new Windows SQL Server 2008 R2, delivered an impressive $296.00 USD per tpsE.

Alternatively, in the TPC-C benchmark, an HP ProLiant DL385 G7 server based on the AMD Opteron processor Model 6176 SE running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise posted a score of .60 USD per tpmC.

My colleague John Fruehe has posted a blog that highlights the meaning of value and provides a more detailed look at these OLTP benchmarks in terms of price/performance.

HPC Compute Clusters – More Cores Pushing Boundaries Forward

Switching gears, while customers worldwide are beginning to adopt and implement our latest 8 and 12 core processors, one of the more interesting examples I’ve seen of late comes from our friends at the HPC Advisory Council.  They recently announced a new compute cluster based on the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform and Mellanox InfiniBand adaptors. This cluster is expected to have a huge impact on the council’s application research and development efforts. The new system, located in Sunnyvale, Calif., provides local and remote access for users and is planned to aid in the development and testing of applications destined to ring in the next phase of high-performance computing.

Couple this with the recent announcement by Cray Inc. of their contract with the Foundation for Space Technology, Applications and Science (FUNCATE), which is responsible for the procurement of high performance computers in Brazil. The contract is to provide the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) with a new Cray XT6 supercomputer with AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors for weather forecasts and climate studies. Once the new Cray XT6 is installed, the INPE is expected to be one of the largest numerical weather prediction and climate research centers in the world.

We’ve seen a great response to our new server platforms from the HPC community. HPC customers continue to tell us they LOVE the additional cores that push their software to the limits. The initial feedback has truly been outstanding.

Server-Side Java – More Cores with an Emphasis on Power Efficiency

Since Java is a core component of many cloud computing clusters, many folks will find recently posted performance evaluation by the German website techchannel.de interesting. The reviewer takes a look at the server-side Java performance of our latest AMD Opteron 6000 series platform with Windows Server 2008. Looking at server-side java operations per watt, the AMD Opteron 6174 processor outperforms the closest competitive offering by almost 12% according to this reviewer.

So, looking at these quick results, it’s clear that more cores are bringing great results in database 2P OLTP price/performance, server-side Java performance/watt, and HPC application evolution and customer adoption. So, how are we doing so far? I’d say pretty well. But, this only means more work is yet to be done.

Have you tried “Magny-Cours” yet? What are your thoughts?

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Let’s crunch the numbers:

First, let’s compare Intel’s highest-end 4P processor, part of the Nehalem-EX family, with AMD’s highest-end AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor:

• 12-Core AMD Opteron™ 6176 SE: $1,386
• 8-Core Intel Xeon X7560: $3,692
• Price difference: $2,306 or a 166% price delta for 1ku pricing

But, not everyone buys the high end. Let’s compare what would be considered more “standard” power parts:

• 12-Core AMD Opteron™ 6174: $1,165
• 8-Core Intel Xeon L7555: $3,157
• Price difference: $1,992 or a 102% price delta for 1ku pricing

(You can find AMD pricing here and Intel pricing here)

In each case, AMD is saving you about $2,000 in what we consider unnecessary “taxes.” You shouldn’t have to pay a premium when buying 4P capable processors, so we’re changing that. But, the real question at hand is what do you do with the cash you save? Sure, we could give you some ideas, but after all, it’s much more fun to hear it straight from the source. So fill out our poll, or let us know in the comments section. Happy tax season!

What Are You Going to Do With AMD’s Server Tax Refund?

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.

The 4P Tax did not die of natural causes, but rather at the hand of a single company – AMD. In a sweeping move, AMD has removed the 4P tax completely as part of the latest AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform. And, while AMD has proclaimed the death of the 4P Tax, customers who have enjoyed paying more than they need to can still find their familiar 4P Tax in competitive solutions.

The 4P Tax is survived by the Value 4P – an upstart server processor segment offered by AMD to deliver 4P capable processors at a 2P price point. We’d like to say we are saddened by the death of the 4P Tax, but customer feedback indicates that we are all far better off without it.

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.

The challenge for all the judges??  It was extremely difficult for us to pick just one winner!   Your responses had us pondering the various ways to make the world a better place; from using technology to help improve the climate, to helping our children excel in the math and sciences, to working to cure the various diseases that take the ones we love.  On the lighter side we even learned of the relationship between bacon and server processors !  Now the only thing to do is to roll-out the winners David Letterman style. Here is the list of the top 3 finalist as well as our grand prize winner.  For those of you in the top 3, expect a personal note from me very soon!

3. Daniel Morgan – Daniel created a YouTube video titled “Technology for Congestion Relief”.  Daniel takes on the damage to the environment, productivity, and quality of life that automobile traffic causes.  Check out Daniel’s creative video showing how technology can be used for traffic congestion management.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1_S9b4P9yU

2. Shay Kilby – created an essay titled “Volume Rendering with AMD”. In this essay Shay writes how software paired with AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors can be used to change the world one voxel at a time by rendering volume data.  Shay provides stunning views of a mummy, and a beetle using Fovia’s High Definition Volume Rendering® (HDVR®).

1. OUR WINNER, Roy Keyes – posted a blog titled “48 Cores to Beat Cancer” which shows how AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors can help to enhance  radiation cancer treatments.

In the end we could only choose one winner (that’s what the lawyers tell me) -- But we really wanted to acknowledge the talent and originality shown by our two runners-up -- so for Daniel and Shay, we will be offering each of you an unofficial runner-up prize consisting of one of our previous generation 1P processors.

Lastly, I would like to provide honorable mention to two of our other participants.  You can imagine after reading thru 800+ of these, when the judges found a few that made us laugh, we had to share.

1. Ryan Allen’s essay on the “Best Bacon Plan Ever”
2. Chris Well’s video “Magny-Cours, it’s a lot of cores”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGzeJ_rytg

Thanks for your submissions, we had a lot of fun with it, and hope you did too.  See you again soon!

For official contest rules please click here:  http://blogs.amd.com/work/48-cores-official-contest-rules/

Anita Tulsiani is in Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Questions still remain, though.  And probably will right on through late September.  Did we do enough rebuilding during the off season?  Can we count on the front office having made the right moves to build a future dynasty?  (Can we be sure the Yankees haven’t done the same?)  In my view, if the 2004 World Series told us anything, it’s less about spending money and more about building a solid team.  One that has players with unique strengths and one that comes together with everyone playing their various positions at just the right time.  Of course, having a brilliant manager can certainly make all the difference.  (See Grady Little.)

At AMD, we have such a team leading our server platform design.  They don’t shave their heads in solidarity or spit sunflower seeds (at least not as far as I know), but they experienced a significant trial together, looked hard at rebuilding and changing their game plan and came back stronger than ever and ready to win.  And they have strong, visionary leadership.

Over the last few years, this group – represented by engineers across the globe – has put a dynastic string of wins together, first with “Shanghai”, a phenomenal quad-core processor that delivered up to 35% more performance while consuming 35% less power and then with “Istanbul”, the world’s first 6-core x86 processor that came out an astounding 5 months ahead of schedule.  That’s really unheard of.

Now we’re looking at last weeks’ launch of the new AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform (aka “Magny-Cours”) that is helping redefine today’s data center.  AMD’s Gina Longoria, director of Product Management, was interviewed in a recent eWeek story.  She told eWeek, “AMD’s Magny-Cours chips offer twice the performance of the company’s Istanbul chips, support for four channels of DDR3 memory for up to 2.5 times the overall memory bandwidth and 33 percent more memory channels than Intel’s two-socket offerings.”

It’s fitting that EETimes, an undisputed leader of engineering journals, has selected the talented group that brought you these wins as one of its ACE Awards finalists for Design Team of the Year.  We’re fielding a team full of all stars and feeling pretty confident about making our enterprise fans happy this season.

Teresa Osborne is a Public Relations Manager for Server and Embedded products at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

First, it is important to understand that there are a wide variety of licensing methods used by server software and most ISVs offer several options to their users. These methods include:

• Number of physical processors or processor sockets
• Number of cores
• Named users  or client access license (CAL)
• Volume or site license
• Deployment (can be several computers)
• Annual subscription fee

Next we need to take a quick look the licensing methods used by popular server software packages:

• Microsoft server software products, including Windows Server 2008 R2/Hyper-V R2, SQL Server 2008, and Exchange 2007, use a variety of licensing methods including by processor socket, by CAL, or a combination of these two.  You can also negotiate volume licensing directly with Microsoft. It should be noted that Microsoft software products do not license by core.
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses an annual subscription agreement that is based on the number sockets in a server.
• Oracle database licenses by processor, core count, user, or a negotiated volume license agreement. Oracle applications typically license by user or some type of volume use methods.
• VMware licenses vSphere by processor or by processor/core count based on the edition you buy, and each edition offers a different set of features/options.

So let’s drill down on two software packages that generate many “license by core” questions -  VMware vSphere and Oracle database.

With the introduction of VMware vSphere 4, VMware made a change to its licensing method. There are now several editions of vSphere, each offering a defined set of features/options that were previously purchased “a-la-carte.”

• The Standard and Enterprise editions license by processor but limit the number of cores that each processor can have to 6 or below.
• The Advanced and Enterprise Plus editions are licensed by processor and don’t put any limitations on core count.
• Since each version has a specific feature set customers unsure about which edition to purchase can use the vSphere Purchase Advisor to get a recommendation.
• Customers who want to explore other licensing methods with VMware should contact them directly.

There are three editions of Oracle database software: Standard Edition One, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. Here is what customer’s need to keep in mind with these editions:

• For Standard Edition One and Standard Edition, a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket. This means that for the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor, which is considered to be an MCM processor by Oracle, Standard Edition One will only support 1 socket servers and Standard Edition will only support 1 or 2 socket servers.
• For Enterprise Edition, the number of required licenses is determined by multiplying the total number of cores of the processor by a core processor licensing factor specified on the Oracle Processor Core Factor Table. For AMD Opteron processors this factor is currently .50, so ($47,500 x # of cores on server x .50) is the equation used to calculate costs.
• Customers who want more details on Oracle database licensing or want to explore other licensing methods such as user of volume licensing should contact Oracle directly.

Finally, it is also helpful to look at software licensing from a broader data center perceptive and not just on the individual server level. For example, in the article “Software Licensing Costs May be Reduced by AMD’s 12-Core Chip Released Today,” Matt Lavallee, the Director of technology at MLS Property Information Network Inc., takes the view that upgrading from his current quad-core chips to the 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor can let him cut down the number of physical servers, which in return can cut down his overall software licensing costs.

AMD continues to work closely with its ISV partners to continually evaluate software licensing issues. We always stress that customers need to work directly with the ISV so they are aware of your unique concerns and needs.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the world of software licensing and the high anticipation of our AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform. Things are certainly getting exciting!

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

The launch of AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform rings in a new era of computing that sees the removal of the “4P Tax.” Since we are so close to tax day in the US, this is a good time to discuss this tax and how eliminating it actually gives your business more options than ever before.

Traditionally, 4P capable processors have sold at a pretty stiff premium to their 2P cousins. Back before AMD entered the server business, a typical 2P processor might have been ~$1000USD and the typical 4P capable processor could have been as much as ~$3500USD. 3.5X more expensive, but unfortunately it did not yield 3.5X greater performance.  In reality, the 4P capable processor was often essentially the same silicon. Processor companies would build a business model around assuming a certain mix of volume 2P processors and high margin 4P processors.

When AMD got into the server market in 2003, this price was pushed down (for our products at least) to closer to ~$2500USD.  Still a premium, but a smaller bite out of your wallet.

Fast forward to 2010. AMD introduces the new AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform, and we actually smash the 4P tax at the same time. All AMD Opteron 6100 processors are 2P and 4P capable. There is no longer the distinction between them.

What does this mean for customers?  Performance actually scales cleanly and price-performance follows that same trend.  No longer does it take a huge jump up on the price scale when 4P technologies are deployed.

Why do this?  This is the most common question from people. It is almost as if they believe customers want to pay more for 4P capable processors.  I have yet to meet any server buyer that would willingly pay a premium if they didn’t have to. Now they don’t.

AMD believes that by removing this tax, we can help the 4P market.  Sound familiar? The 4P market has been in decline since 2000.  Under extreme pressure from the 2P market, which is reaching performance increases at a faster pace, the 4P market is struggling to remain viable. And this is at a time when workloads are becoming more demanding and can really utilize the CPU, I/O, and memory capabilities that were traditionaly only deivered by 4P. We believe the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform is the “shot in the arm” that the 4P market needs.

Here is a quick example of how this new strategy can pay dividends for customers.  I have dropped in a table with processor prices to prove a point.

Below we are comparing our competitor’s top bin processor pricing for 2 processors to our pricing on 4 mid-bin processors (AMD Opteron processors Model 6136 at $744 each). As you can see, we are almost 50% higher in integer throughput performance while also being 11% lower in total processor cost.  Truly, these economics start to change the game when it comes to what platform you will deploy for which applications.

Considering that differential, customers may be very interested in a Value 4P configuration, offering 32 total cores, instead of a 2P that only offers 12 physical cores.

So where does a system like this play?  Not everywhere, but there are a few places.

• Highly parallel HPC - Clusters where compute density is critical and the fabric interconnect is not saturated can be great targets. Imagine being able to use 1 4P instead of 2 2P servers.  You can probably cut down on the cost of your fabric interconnect (cards, cables and switches), and may be able to reduce power and management costs by having fewer nodes.
• Virtualization – One of the main goals of virtualization is to consolidate resources. Many virtualized platforms are 2P today because of cost pressures.  Many of these customers might gladly jump to a more scalable 4P as the main focus of consolidation if they could just make the economics work. The core and memory capabilities of the value 4P server enable the robust VMs needed to run demanding workloads like database and web serving.
• Database – a natural worload for 4P value server. Databases like SQL Server are highly threaded and can easily consume the up to 48 cores you can have on the value 4P server. You could also consolidate databases (with or without virtualization) on these platforms, and run Business Intelligence workloads with the analyst and database engines on the same server, helping to cut down on network traffic.
• Growing applications - Nobody ever wants to be the most expensive house on the block. It is the same with servers.  Do you want to buy the top end 2P, with the fastest processors, all full of memory, if you think that the application will need more scalability in a year? With a Value 4P, you could buy in at the middle of the neighborhood and still have expandability for the future.

There are plenty of compelling reasons why Value 4P servers make a lot of sense, and it looks like today, only one company is willing to remove the 4P tax for you, so be sure that when you are looking for value, you look for the AMD Opteron processor.

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.

David’s comments focused around key use cases for the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform, including virtualization, database and web hosting. These are areas where Microsoft’s customers are looking for a balance of price, performance, and power.  The new AMD-based platforms from HP and Dell – like the HP ProLiant DL385 G7 and the Dell PowerEdge 815 – promise to deliver.  An article in Softpedia, “Windows Server 2008 R2 Plays Nice with 8- and 12-Core AMD Opteron 6000 CPUs,” provides a more complete look at David’s comments.

So let’s take a quick look at one of the referenced workloads, database, which is a core technology for many applications. Organizations are drowning in data. IDC projects that by 2011, nearly 1,800 exabytes of digital data are expected to be produced annually. The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform is perfect for database, offering up to 48 cores and one half a terabyte of memory to crunch through data. In fact a recent performance evaluation published in AnandTech by Johan De Gelas showcases AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform strength in a key application of database – Decision Support (also called Business Intelligence)

The vApus benchmark was run on an AMD engineering reference system featuring two 12-Core AMD Opteron processors Model 6174 with 64-bit versions of Windows Server® 2008 and SQL Server 2008 and utilizing the real-world “Nieuws.be” Database. Here is a summary of the benchmark results as published in the article.

These results showcase how a well-threaded application like SQL Server can scale seamlessly when given more cores. In fact, in this benchmark SQL Server adds up to about 80% more performance when adding an extra 12 cores (dual AMD Opteron processor Model 2435 vs. dual AMD Opteron processor Model 6174). Johan notes “The result of this scaling is that for once, you can notice which CPUs have real cores vs. ones that have virtual (Hyper Threading) cores: the 12-core Opteron 6174 outperforms the best Xeon by 20%.”

So just image what “value 4P servers” based on the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform will do with the upcoming release of SQL Server R2, with its added features to support Business Intelligence.

 If you are interested in reading more about real cores versus hyperthreaded cores, you should check out a blog by my colleague Andy Parma, “Intel Hyper-Threading vs. AMD True Core Scalability.”

You might also want to check out this video  featuring Leendert VanDoorn, Senior Fellow at AMD, John Fruehe, Director of Server Product Marketing, and myself talking about some of the software aspects of AMD Opteron 6000 Series Platform.

What are thoughts on real cores versus hyperthreaded cores for database? Let me know your thoughts.

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

As a part of the launch activities for these new processors, we’ve added over 40 new benchmark pages to www.amd.com/opteronperformance.

To view them all, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:          AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                            Select all Power Bands

• Workload/Applications:              Select all Workloads/Applications

1. Servers using AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 (12-core 2.2GHz) have higher SPECint®_rate2006 and SPECfp®_rate2006 performance (at a lower processor price) than servers using Intel Xeon processor Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz)

       a. AMD also offers an even higher performance AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6176 SE (12-core 2.3GHz), but these SE processors aren’t necessary to out perform a server using Intel Xeon processor Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz) on these benchmarks.

       b. Also note that Intel Xeon processor Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz) has a TDP of 130W, which is significantly higher than the 95W TDP of the prior generation Intel Xeon processor Model X5570 (4-core 2.93GHz).

       c. Finally, the Intel Xeon processor Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz) is priced 42% higher than the AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 (12-core 2.2GHz)¹. As John so eloquently put it in his blog, Intel’s customers are “paying 42% more money for the luxury of purchasing a slower processor.”

2. Servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6136 (8-core 2.4GHz) have higher SPECint®_rate2006 and SPECfp®_rate2006 performance (at a lower processor price) than servers using Intel Xeon processor Model X5570 (4-core 2.93GHz).

To view these charts, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:        AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                          Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:            Floating Point Throughput Performance and Integer Throughput Performance

Click on SPECint®_rate2006 – Two-Socket Servers (including AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor) and Click on SPECfp®_rate2006 – Two-Socket Servers (including AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor)

3. Value Four-Socket Servers using four AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6136 (8-core 2.4GHz) have higher SPECint®_rate2006 and SPECfp®_rate2006 performance (at a lower total processor price) than servers using two Intel Xeon processors Model X5680 (6-core 3.33GHz).

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:           AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                             Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:               Performance Summary

Click on “Performance Summary – Value Four-Socket Servers vs. Two-Socket Server”

4. In similarly configured servers, the server using low-power AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6164 HE (12-core 1.7GHz) consumes up to 8 percent less power at Active Idle than the server using low-power Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2425 HE.

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:           AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                             HE/EE

• Workload/Applications:               Energy Efficiency Performance

click on “Server Power Consumption – Two-Socket AMD Opteron™ HE Processor-Based Servers (Low-Power Processors)”.

5.  AMD Opteron™ processor-based servers provide superior performance when comparing servers using processors priced at $744.

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:          AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                            Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:              Integer Throughput Performance

Click on“SPECint®_rate2006 – Two-Socket Servers ($744 Processors)”

6. Servers using AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors provide superior performance to servers using Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors at a number of High Performance Computing (HPC) applications.

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:           AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                             Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:              Compute Intensive Application Performance

click on“HPC Application Performance Summary – Two-Socket Servers”

7. Servers using AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors support significantly more DDR3-1333 DIMMs than servers using Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors. Support for a large number of high speed DDR3-1333 DIMMs can benefit High Performance Computing, Database, and Virtualization applications that require a large amount of memory to operate at high speeds.

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:          AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                           Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:             Performance Summary

click on “Memory Scalability – Two-Socket Servers”.

8. Servers using AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processors provide significantly more performance than servers using other AMD Opteron™ processors in the market today.

To view these charts, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:           AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                            Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:              Performance Summary

“Performance Summary – Two-Socket Servers (including AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor)

“Performance Summary – Four-Socket Servers”

“Performance Summary Over Time – Two-Socket Servers (including AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor)”

“Performance Summary Over Time – Four-Socket Servers”

9. As the number of programs running on each server increases, the performance of AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor-based servers scales better than the performance of servers using Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors. More information on this topic is available here.

To view this chart, make the following selections:

• Processors and Platforms:        AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series Processor

• Power Bands:                          Mainstream

• Workload/Applications:            Performance Summary

 “True Core Scalability – Two-Socket Servers”.

This is only a sampling of the information available. There is also data available comparing the feature sets of $744 processors available from AMD and Intel (“Feature Set Comparison – Two-Socket Servers”), information on how effectively performance scales from two-socket servers to four-socket servers (“Performance Scaling – Two-Socket and Four-Socket Servers”), and comparisons of servers using 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz AMD Opteron™ processors.

What else would you like to see? We’d love to hear your input in the comments section.

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. 

SPEC, SPECint, and SPECfp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation.

¹Pricing reflects 1kU tray pricing on www.amd.com and www.intel.com as of March 29, 2010.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of people who contributed to this momentous launch, from the designers and the engineers all the way through the product managers, marketing teams, regional offices and PR specialists.  This launch is an unqualified success, and now the fun begins.  We’ve done our work so now the sales teams can really show the world how 12 cores will change the world.

Thanks,
John.

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.

Spending a large part of my life, blogging, communicating in online forums, speaking at events, all left me conflicted.  We have a GREAT product and I wanted to scream it from the rooftops, but we don’t disclose the details until launch for competitive reasons.  Well, the gloves are now off because today we launched the new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors.

These are the world’s first 8- and 12-core x86 server processors, and have a host of new features, including 4 memory channels, HyperTransport™ technology 3.0, a fourth HyperTransport technology link for better processor-to-processor communication in 4P servers, and new power management features that allow us to double the cores, and achieve up to double the performance (compared to our previous generations), without having to double the power or the cost.

Performance – For a long time I have been telling people that performance is not the only factor in deciding on a server.  As a matter of fact, I often said it was the least important factor.  Many interpreted this to mean “we’ll be slower.”  Actually, we perform better, but I will still stand by my belief that while performance is important, for 95%+ of the servers bought, it is not the main driver behind the purchase.

To give you an idea of how we perform, relative to our competitor, let’s start with SPECint®_rate2006, which is always Intel’s favorite benchmark to showcase performance.  Here, we are showing higher integer throughput with our AMD Opteron Model 6174 processor versus our competitor’s top of the line 2P Xeon X5680.

You may notice that I chose to compete with one speed lower than our top performance processor because we don’t need to top speed to win. We are not only higher performing than their top speed part, but we are 88% faster than our previous generation processors.

Shifting gears to floating point performance, here we see that we are 21% faster than our competitor’s top 2P product (and again, this is not AMD’s fastest processor.) Best of all we are a whopping 119% faster than our 6-core previous generation processors (formerly codenamed “Istanbul”).

You’re probably wondering why we wouldn’t put our highest speed processor up in this comparison. It’s because we realize that while performance is important, it is not the most important factor in server decisions.  In most cases, we believe price and power consumption play a far larger role.

Power consumption – Note that to get to the performance levels that our competitor has, they had to utilize a 130W processor that is not targeted at the mainstream server market, but is more likely to be used in workstations. Intel isn’t forthcoming on their power numbers so we don’t really have a good measurement of their maximum power, but their 130W TDP part is being beaten in performance by our 80W ACP part.  It feels like the power efficiency is clearly in our court.  The fact that we have doubled cores and stayed in the same power/thermal range compared to our previous generation is a testament to our power efficiency.

Price – This is an area that I don’t understand.  Coming out of one of the worst economic times in recent history, why Intel pushed up the top Xeon X series price from $1386 (for the 5500 X series) to $1663 (for the 5600 X series) is beyond me.  Customers are looking for more, not less for their IT dollar.  In the comparison above, while they still can’t match our performance, they really fall short in pricing.  At $1663 versus our $1165, their customers are paying 42% more money for the luxury of purchasing a slower processor.  This makes no sense.  Shouldn’t we all be offering customers more for their money, not less?

In addition to our aggressive 2P pricing, we have also stripped away the “4P tax.” No longer do customers have to pay a premium to buy a processor capable of scaling up to 4 CPUs in a single platform.  As of today, the 4P tax is effectively $0.  Well, of course, that depends on you making the right processor choice, as I am fairly sure that our competitor will still want to charge you a premium for that feature.  I recommend you don’t pay it.

As a matter of fact, a customer will probably find that a 4P server, with 32 total cores (4 x 8-core) based on our new pricing, will not only perform better than our competitor’s highest end 2P system, but it will also do it for a lower price.  Suddenly, it is 4P for the masses!

Yes, with these new processors and the new AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform, will change the world. At least that’s how I see it, let me know what you think.

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.

The launch of the new AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor (codenamed “Magny-Cours”) is further proof that this trend continues as AMD is making giant strides in processor innovation and Cray is positioned to make the network innovations to support this inside Cray supercomputing systems.

Throughout the relationship, Cray has seen AMD make several major technological leaps in processor architecture and design, and some of AMD’s most important advancements have been related to its leadership in driving multi-core technology.  AMD has made steady, significant progress from dual-core to quad-core and on to six-core over the last several years.  With the launch of its new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor, AMD is making one of the most significant strides ever in improving computational density, energy efficiency, memory bandwidth and thus, overall system performance.

We couldn’t be happier.

With the advent of AMD’s new technology, it is critical for supercomputers to demonstrate both scaling within the node and scaling across the network. The new Cray XT6 supercomputer, which was introduced at SC09 last year in Portland, OR, features the new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors and supports 16 or 24 processing cores within each computational node.  Cray, AMD and software partners like PGI are working closely to deliver optimized performance of applications within the node and across the system, utilizing the best-of-class compilers, libraries, and a fully integrated programming environment designed to help users find the scalability they need to run their applications efficiently.

We’re doing a lot of stuff beyond just building hardware. Cray is a permanent member of the OpenMP Architecture Review Board, which is working to improve scalability within the node.  Cray also contributes to the Linux® open source community regarding the scalability of the Linux operation system, improving performance and scalability for the entire community.

Cray and AMD provide one of the highest performance dual-socket x86 nodes in the industry at over 200 gigaflops per node.  The Cray expertise in HPC networks provides the missing link that provides scalability to go outside the node and allow applications to run efficiently across hundreds or thousands of nodes.

What does all of this mean for this era of scientific computing?

It means that users of Cray supercomputing systems with AMD’s latest processors can expect to do 2x to 3x more science in the same compute environment with same power and thermal envelope, and the same floor space.  In short, the Cray XT6 is now the one of the “greenest” x86 HPC supercomputing systems in the world.  It’s green because it’s efficient, it’s green because it’s dense, and it’s green because it scales.

We congratulate AMD for reaching this milestone. Not only are we excited that AMD is building processors that scale well for scientific applications – so are Cray customers such as NERSC and HECToR that are receiving some of the first systems based on these processors.

Barry Bolding is VP of Scalable Systems for Cray. 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.

Microsoft:

“Microsoft has partnered with AMD in the data center since the original AMD Opteron processors were launched in 2003, and we naturally have been working together to deliver advanced efficiencies with the new 8- and 12-Core AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms,” said Eric Jewett, Director, Microsoft Server Marketing.  “Customers running Windows Server® 2008 R2, Hyper-V R2, and SQL Server can benefit from the balanced price, performance, and power these new server platforms offer.”

VMware:

“With AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms, AMD is taking a big step forward in terms of efficiency and performance-per-watt. Our flagship virtualization solution – VMware vSphere™ 4 – is fully compatible with and optimized for ‘Magny-Cours’,” said Richard Brunner, chief platform architect and principal engineer, VMware. “Combining VMware’s proven virtualization technology with AMD’s most impressive server platform to date helps our joint customers to fully harness the promise of virtualization.”

Red Hat:

“For years, AMD and Red Hat have been focused on providing outstanding reliability and flexibility in the datacenter,” said Tim Burke, vice president, Engineering, Platform Engineering at Red Hat. “AMD’s next-generation 8- and 12-Core AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms extend that focus, and when paired with Red Hat Enterprise Linux®, these server platforms can help enterprise customers achieve impressive performance, while also helping to maximizing their IT investment.”

Parallels:

“Parallels and AMD began collaborating to provide virtualized solutions to the web hosting community well before cloud computing was a buzz word, and we are excited to continue the tradition of mutual innovation with the release of the new AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms,” said Amir Sharif, vice president of Virtualization at Parallels.  “Both Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and the new Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal are fully compatible with AMD’s latest server platforms, and we look forward to bringing improved, highly efficient virtualization solutions to customers around the world.”

Citrix:

“Together, Citrix and AMD have been helping to pave the way in the industry for efficient and optimized client and server virtualization solutions to meet the demands of today’s IT environment,” said N. Louis Shipley,  group vice president and general manager, XenServer Product Group, Citrix Systems. “Now, with the availability of platforms based on the latest 8- and 12-Core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors, we’re able to deliver further enhanced scalability and performance for virtualization through Citrix XenServer and XenApp.”

Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

Today the AMD Opteron™  processor made it back to Austin for some quick relaxation before heading back out again.  Two quick laps around City Park helped put a new spring in its step. While City Park is the most technically challenging mountain bike trail here in Austin (due to its large limestone ledges), the trail was no match for this processor as it easily handled even the heaviest impacts.

Today’s Fact: The new AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor includes a fourth HyperTransport™ technology link, which allows all of the processors in a 4 socket configuration to communicate with each other directly, with only one hop between any two processors.  This helps reduce system latency, and with up to 6.4GT/s performance for the HyperTransport technology links, data just screams along the links between processors.  All of this is designed to deliver exceptional scalability not only for 4 processor servers, but also for 2 processor servers.  Both will be able to take advantage of the higher communication speeds.

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.

Today, this Chinese dragon wants to take a bite out of our newest processor. But that’s not the only cruncher in the picture.  The AMD Opteron™  6100 Series processor is a real number cruncher.  With 8 or 12 cores AND up to 12 floating point units, you’ll see some serious number crunching for technical applications and HPC applications.

Today’s fact: With up to 12 cores and a clock speed of 2.2GHz or more, this AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor has quite the number crunching power.  Each one is capable of 105.6 Gigaflops (12 cores x 4 32-bit FPU instructions x 2.2GHz).  And that score is for the 2.2GHz model, which isn’t even the fastest one!

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.

Today the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor is hanging out at WebhostingDay in Brühl, Germany.  One of the largest web hosting events in the world, this European event was full of customers who were interested in our latest 12-core wonder, filling the room for the keynote speech.

Today’s fact:  If the processor here does not look all that clear, that is not the camera (at least as far as I am concerned), it’s because this is a great processor for cloud environments.  Many customers are looking for the ultra-low power of the upcoming AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor for their cloud environments.  But don’t forget that there are some areas where a 12-core low power band product can be a great match from a performance-per-watt and watt- per-core perspective. I spoke to one customer that was building out a cloud solution based on 250 4P servers with 12-core HE power band processors because the density of cores at such a low power was so compelling.

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.

Almost 20 hours after leaving Austin, we have finally arrived at the first stop. I can’t stop thinking about processors, I am even dreaming about them.  While I am in my deep sleep mode, I know that there is another deep sleep that consumes very little power.

Today’s fact: The new AMD Opteron™ 6100 processor includes C1E, a new low power state to help conserve energy when in idle.  While we know that customers looking for 12-core processors are looking for the highest amount of throughput, we recognize that there are some times where the processors may be in idle states. During these times, through C1E power states, the memory controller and HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology links are turned off, reducing the amount of power consumed by the processor.  Because of this new technology, systems based on the new 12-core processors are capable of idling at a lower rate than systems based on our current 6-core processors.***

*** 2x AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6164 HE, “Dinar” reference design, 4x 4GB RDDR3 1.5v 1333MHz DIMMs, 3Y Power Technology YM-2415C vs. 2x AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2425 HE, Tyan 2927,  4x 4GB RDDR2 667 DIMMs, 3Y Power Technology YM-2415C. Power measured at the system level.

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.

Day 2:

Most people have not yet seen photos of the back of the processor, only the lid.  What you see here are the 1944 contact points in the Land Grid Array (LGA) package.  These packages feature flat contacts on the processor substrate instead of the pins that many are used to seeing. The pins are actually in the socket and when you close the cover, they rise, making connection with the processor.   Four channels of memory are critical for applications like database, HPC and virtualization, where customers are either working with large data sets or trying to drive a large amount of data through the processor at one time. For these workloads, constrained memory throughput can result in diminished performance.

Today’s fact: Compared to 2P Intel-based systems you’ll see 33% more memory channels with the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor, resulting in greater throughput relative to their 3-channel design. This helps enable higher performance for memory-constrained applications.**

** 4 channels x DDR3-1333 memory for AMD Opteron™ processor codenamed “Magny-Cours” vs. 3 channels x DDR3-1333 memory for Intel Xeon processor codenamed “Westmere.”

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.

When this new platform featuring the world’s first 8- or 12-core x86 processor officially launches later this quarter, you’re going to hear from even more of our launch partners and customers.   We have some of the world’s most innovative server vendors (we can’t say who just yet, but I think you can fill in the blanks here) lined up to feature unique server platforms  that give IT customers the muscle they need for demanding workloads, balanced with power efficiency and economic value.

Stay tuned.  The full story is to be continued…

Teresa Osborne is a Public Relations Manager for Server and Embedded products at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

As the first, and only 12-core x86 server processor, the new AMD Opteron 6100 Series changes the way that customers manage growth and deploy applications in the data center.

Day 1:

Wow, today was quite a day.  If you’ve seen the movie “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” then you know what we’re going to have to do to get to our final destination, Brühl, Germany. All AMD Opteron processors are manufactured at GLOBALFOUNDRIES in Dresden, Germany.  So this will be a homecoming of sorts for this processor; built in Germany, assembled in Penang, Malaysia and then tested and marked in Singapore.  As I write this we are over Canada, on our way to Frankfurt, Germany, the country’s financial center.

Today’s fact:  Time is money, and in the financial capital of Frankfurt they know this more than anybody.  Because this processor has four memory channels and up to 12 DIMM slots, it is capable of handling large memory footprints through the use of low cost DIMMs.  For instance, compared to a 3-channel system based on a competitive chip that features only 9 DIMM slots, a 48GB memory configuration would be up to 34% more expensive for that system because they would be forced to utilize the more expensive 8GB DIMMs.*

* Based on 48GB memory configuration for AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform at $2,207.88 (12 x 4GB) vs. 48GB Intel configuration at $3,353.91 (3 x 8GB + 6 x 4GB).  Prices according to http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule/DDR3/~HS~/list.html as of 3/1/10.

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.

• 138 entries from Folding@home – one of the largest supercomputing grids in the world, using distributed computing to band people around the world with software that investigates human diseases and disorders such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and various forms of cancers.
• Modeling of new socio-economic scenarios to help end poverty
• Accurately forecasting climate changes to respond to greenhouse emissions, global warming, and sea levels
• Creating a database to monitor individuals convicted of crimes (involving children) to help prevent further child abductions
• Utilizing virtualization on a grand scale – by having web servers, SQL server, file servers, and email servers all on separate Virtual Machines with multi core possibilities
• Teaching young children (through online games) how to write computer programs, providing a fun appreciation for math and science at an early age.

We even had our competitor weigh in recently with a response to our contest and how it’s not necessary.  Oh well, we here at AMD  just care what our customers do with our products and like to hear what they get excited about.  We take great pride in understanding our customers – and based on your responses you seem to agree.

Well keep those posts coming!  As a reminder you must:

• Be a legal residents of fifty (50) United States (including the District of Columbia) or Canada (excluding Quebec)
• Be at least eighteen (18) years of age as of the Entry Period
• Please do not submit multiple entries.  When you hit submit, your entry is received (you won’t get an email confirming your submission.
• Please know & follow the official contest rules to be eligible to win

Anita Tulsiani is in Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.