AMD keeps Barcelona specs under wraps
814
(InfoWorld) - Some of the first servers based on Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD's) upcoming Barcelona quad-core chip areÂ on display at Computex, but details of the chips are being kept tightly under wraps. Supermicro Computer, Tyan Computer, and Uniwide TechnologiesÂ are all showing Barcelona systems this week in Taipei, but the companies and AMD are not revealing details about what's inside. At Supermicro's booth, the company had a two-way Barcelona server, which was housed inside a nondescript beige box, running a full-screen video clip. The demonstration was not connected to a keyboard or mouse -- eliminating the chance a visitor might try to view details of its configuration -- and was described simply as "Barcelona solution." A Supermicro executive manning the company's booth said most of the interest in the server seemed to come from Intel employees, eager for a glimpse of the chip AMD is counting on to revive its flagging fortunes in the server market. Three Barcelona servers are on display at AMD's booth, but little information was available on the chips themselves. Uniwide's Barcelona server is a single-processor rack server with room for 32GB of DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory and a 300-watt power supply. Tyan's Barcelona server was a two-processor system that can hold 64GB of DDR2 memory and uses a 600-watt power supply. The Barcelona servers at Computex are all running engineering samples of the chip that were provided to help server makers build their systems. AMD declined to offer detailed specifications, but said the chips are on track to ship during the third quarter. Â
751636
(InfoWorld) - AMD on Monday is giving the public an advanced look at how its pending quad-core chip will improve performance and save energy. AMD, playing catch-up to rival Intel, whoseÂ quad-core XeonÂ product launched in 2006, will discuss features of its quad-core product, code-named Barcelona, at the International Solid States Circuits Conference in San Francisco, a forum for engineers in solid state circuitry and system-on-a-chip processor design. AMD says it will present details at the conference of how Barcelona, due to be released in mid-2007, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over its own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003. Barcelona will feature "Enhanced PowerNow" technology, which will dynamically adjust core frequencies as workloads change in order to power down cores when not needed to save energy, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron. Under the PowerNow technology already deployed in the dual-core Opteron, the OS delivers the needed power to the busiest core, but if the other core is not as busy, it will still receive the voltage demanded of the busiest core, Kerby said. But with Enhanced PowerNow, while the busiest core will receive the power it needs, the OS will reduce the frequency and voltage of the remaining cores because they aren't as busy. "We still see power savings with our current PowerNow technology, but it's going to get better with Barcelona because we're going to be able to dynamically and independently adjust the core frequencies of each individual core," he said. Also in Barcelona, the OS will directly communicate with the CPU instead of first going through the CPU driver, a more efficient approach, he said. "With Barcelona, there is no CPU driver middleman. The OS can tell the processor directly, 'Hey this is how much work I'm doing,' and the Barcelona core will determine when the best time is to make that change. It's not doing it blindly," he said. Barcelona also separates the power management of the cores from that of the memory controller, which is embedded in AMD-designed processors. That way, frequency and voltage can be reduced to the cores when they are not busy and increased to the memory controller when it is busy, and vice versa. AMD claims an 80 percent reduction in memory controller power usage with this design change. Barcelona will also feature enhanced clock-gating, which means core logic circuits can be turned on or off to save power. Like settings on a coffee grinder, the chip can do "coarse" or "fine" clock gating, shutting down increasingly finer sections of core logic as needed. AMD claims that Barcelona can deliver a 40 percent improvement in performance over "the competition." While not mentioning Intel's Xeon specifically, AMD has long pointed out that its quad-core chip will be four cores designed on the same piece of silicon, while Intel's design is two dual-core processors packaged together.
208797
The showdown is set for AMD's Barcelona with Intel's release today of Xeon 7300 chips.
691536
Although servers based on AMD's Barcelona chip are on display at Computex, details of the quad-core chips are not available.
84894
Hits stores in September Barcelona has arrived, sort of, and AMD is talking more about beating itself up than knocking Intel with the new chip.â¦
731606
(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD) isÂ getting ready to launch Barcelona, its first quad-core server chip. A successful Barcelona launch, expected to happen during the third quarter, is critical for AMD, which has seen itsÂ share of the server market batteredÂ in recent quarters by Intel. Those market-share losses came with a heavy price, dragging AMD's finances into the red. In April, the company announcedÂ a $611 million loss, largely attributed to tougher competition and aÂ price war with Intel. To stem these losses, AMD has cut discretionary spending but executives are counting on Barcelona to restore its financial health and turn the tables on its archrival. Kevin Knox, the vice president of AMD's commercial business, recently sat down with IDG News Service to discuss preparations for Barcelona's upcoming launch. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation. IDGNS: Where do things currently stand with Barcelona? Kevin Knox: We're still on target for a mid-year launch with Barcelona. We're actually pretty excited about the product, particularly with respect to some of the features that we're going to enable. When we started out with Barcelona it had a certain feature set. From the time we started out, from the design perspective, the aspects we're going to address, things like virtualization and power, have become more important to the industry. We think its going to have a bigger impact than we originally anticipated. IDGNS: Is Barcelona going to reverse AMD's recent losses in server market share? Knox: I firmly believe it will. A lot of that has to do with this not being just a speed upgrade. If it was just a speed upgrade, it's a lot more challenging at any point in time to get an advantage and maintain that advantage. Barcelona is not just a quad-core chip, it's more than quad core. We've made fundamental, significant changes to the architecture as part of the chip. We looked at the overall design, at the cache and the pipelines, so it's a lot more than just taking two dual-core chips and saying it's quad core. It's a true, native quad-core design with enhancements at the processor level. IDGNS: How do you view comparisons between Barcelona and Intel's quad-core server chips? Knox: If you look at the two products, they're very different products. If you go back many years, when we designed Opteron, Opteron was designed for multi-chip, multi-core environments. When we went from single core to dual core, it wasn't a big thing for us. When we went from dual core to quad core, the reason this has taken a little longer is we made some enhancements to the core, not because going to four cores was the major challenge. What we've focused on is doing enhancements to the core and doing virtualization. This is probably a larger and more important launch than you've seen in the past. There's a lot riding on the ecosystem, the ISVs, and hardware vendors, to make sure we have all the pieces in a line so when we do launch we can have pretty quick uptake. IDGNS: How much work has been done to seed the market for Barcelona? Has AMD shipped sample systems to major customers so they can test their applications? Knox: Yes, we're starting to get some samples to customers as seeds. You definitely need to have seed programs. They're critical. People want to kick the tires, especially with something as significant as the move from dual core to quad core, and the enhancements we've made. We're going to have a larger seed program than we've ever had before on the server side. Part of that's because there's some new stuff, and part of that's because it's a pretty competitive market right now. Frankly, there are some accounts you have to seed. Whenever new technology comes out, you've got to let the Wall Street guys try it out. And it's not just the end-user community. There's a whole ISV aspect to it, as well. They've got to get ready. You've got to get the hardware manufacturers in Taiwan ready. IDGNS: What does the launch of Barcelona mean? When the launch happens next quarter, will the chips be widely available in large quantities? Knox: That's what we're going through now. Our plan is not to have a paper launch. We want to do a launch with a product. IDGNS: With large numbers of Barcelona servers available for sale? Knox: Right. And given what's been going on in the market, it's extremely critical that people understand that. We have had a number of launches in the past, I'll point to Intel's Clovertown launch as an example. They launched Clovertown and I think it was less than 10 percent of their product mix two quarters later. That says to me it wasn't really a quick ramp, product wasn't readily available. Our goal here is to get Barcelona out, and get it into the market as quickly as possible.
729086
Barcelona is finally here. Four years since its last major chip upgrade, AMD is introducing the quad-core Operton server processor, which the company has described as &quot;the most advanced x86 processor&quot; ever made.
764387
SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA - Executives at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) painted a much different picture of the chip maker than in recent years during a briefing for analysts and reporters Friday at the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.
519899
CHIP FIRM AMD has revealed more details of the dual core processors it expects to introduce next year. The firm presented at the Processor Forum in San Jose earlier today, and, according to EE Times, revealed some further details of its plans.
274821
Enterprise apps to run on games hardware, company hopes ATI - effectively AMD - has begun pitching its Radeon X1900 graphics chip at corporates, not for running graphics on workstations but for processing large data sets much the way Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) are meant to.â¦
148462
Roadmap ATI leak neatly coincides with AMD's ATI will target AMD's Socket AM2+ interconnect with its RD790 chipset - a part with the abiility to host four graphics cards, allegedly leaked company roadmap slides reveal.â¦
442976
Finally ending rumors of delays, AMD announced that its quad-core Opteron server processors, known also by the codename of &quot;Barcelona,&quot; will be shipping later this summer. The chips, the company&#39;s first quad-cores, might help AMD regain its financial footing and help it compete with archrival Intel.
664732
Advanced Micro Devices plans to ratchet up the clock speed of its new Barcelona chip by year's end, as part of its effort to catch up to rival Intel in the market for quad-core server processors.
207119
AMD is releasing nine versions of its new Quad-Core Opteron server chip, code-named Barcelona.
102530
AMD took the wraps off its first ever x86 64-bit dual-core processor during demonstrations held at the company&#39;s Austin facilities Tuesday.
97824
Somehow, Intel has skillfully avoided use of the metaphor "two-by-four" to represent its latest ultra-high-end CPU platform rollout this morning at GDC in San Francisco. But AMD might be feeling like it's been hit by one.
639835
(InfoWorld) - After months of delays, Advanced Micro Devices' latest processor, a quad-core server chip calledÂ Barcelona, is at last expected to hit the marketÂ Monday. The stakes surrounding the release of Barcelona, officially called Quad-Core Opteron, are high. AMD lost ground in the server-chip market toÂ rival IntelÂ in recent quarters and is counting on the new processor to reverse its fortunes. That won't be easy. While AMD struggled to get the Quad-Core Opteron out of its factories,Â Intel shipped newer, faster processorsÂ expected to compete more closely with the new chip, particularly in the market for high-end servers with four or more processors. Nevertheless, AMD is counting on technical differences between its quad-core chips and those from Intel to offer better performance while consuming less power. Nine versions of theÂ Quad-Core OpteronÂ will be available from Monday, all manufactured using a 65nm process. These are the first quad-core chips from AMD and the first server chips from the company made using this technology. Previous server chips were made using a 90nm process. "We used this opportunity as we move from 90 nanometers (nm) to 65nm to redesign the processor, to be able to optimize and get more efficiency out of it," said John Fruehe, AMD's worldwide business development manager for servers and workstations. At the high end of the Quad-Core Opteron lineup are chips designed for servers with four or more processors. The 2GHz 8350 has a thermal design power (TDP) of 95 watts and is priced at $1,019 in 1,000-unit quantities, a standard measure of processor pricing. TDP does not indicate the amount of power that a processor consumes, rather it describes the maximum amount of heat that server makers must be able to dissipate from the chip in extreme circumstances. The second Quad-Core Opteron designed for multi-chip servers is the 8347, which runs at 1.9GHz and has a 95-watt TDP. The chip is priced at $786. The range of multi-chip servers also includes two models with a lower TDP, the 8347HE and 8346HE. With a TDP of 68 watts, these chips run at clock speeds of 1.9GHz and 1.8GHz, respectively. They are priced at $873 and $698. All of the Quad-Core Opteron chips have 512KB of level two cache per processor core, and 2MB of level three cache shared by the four cores. Five versions of the Quad-Core Opteron will be available for servers with one or two processors. The Quad-Core Opteron 2350 and 2347 run at speeds of 2GHz and 1.9GHz and have a TDP of 95 watts. The chips are priced at $389 and $316, respectively. The 1.9GHz 2347HE, 1.8GHz 2346HE, and 1.7GHz 2344HE have a lower TDP, at 68 watts. The chips will cost $377, $255, and $209. AMD said the new chips are faster than previous Opterons, with a 2GHz Quad-Core Opteron running 79 percent faster than a 3GHz dual-core Opteron. Five single-core Opteron processors are required to match the performance of a single Quad-Core Opteron, the company said. The Quad-Core Opteron has four processor cores on a silicon chip that also includes a memory controller hub and high-speed HyperTransport links. By comparison, Intel's quad-core processors have two dual-core silicon chips inside a multi-chip package that does not include the memory controller. AMD has added new features to the Quad-Core Opteron designed to boost the chip's performance and lower power consumption relative to earlier Opteron chips. For example, each of the Quad-Core Opteron's processors and the memory controller have independent power supplies, which allows them to run at different clock speeds and reduce power consumption when they don't need to run at full speed. "You're most likely going to have a quad-core processor with four different speeds because you've got four different utilization levels at any time," Fruehe said. The chip maker also added a 128-bit floating point unit to the Quad-Core Opteron to boost performance for certain types of applications. At the same time AMD will announce the availability of the Quad-Core Opteron, the company plans to say more than 50 systems based on the chips are now available from vendors like Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Dell, among others. If servers based on the Quad-Core Opteron chips turn out to be faster and more energy efficient than systems based on Intel's offerings, that edge may not last long. In November, Intel plans to refresh the bulk of its server chip lineup with a new family called Penryn. The Penryn server chips will be made using a 45-nm process and will have more memory cache than Intel's existing server chips, giving them a boost in performance. "We have a significant lead today and we believe we will have that lead with Clovertown, and once we have Harpertown with 45-nm we will extend that lead further," said Adesh Gupta, regional platform architecture manager at Intel Asia-Pacific's Server Platforms Group, referring to code names for Intel's current and upcoming quad-core processors designed for two-way servers. Later this year, AMD expects to release Quad-Core Opteron chips that run faster than the versions set to be announced Monday. One of those processors is a 2.3GHz Quad-Core Opteron SE designed for high-performance computers, set for release during the fourth quarter. AMD plans to offer faster versions of the standard Quad-Core Opteron chips during the fourth quarter, with faster versions of the low-power HE chips due during the fourth quarter of 2007 or the first quarter of 2008. Â