AMD cuts power on 90nm Opteron processors
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Advanced Micro Devices managed to reduce the maximum thermal output of its newly released 90 nanometer Opteron server processors by 25 percent compared to the previous generation, the company said Wednesday.
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Processors will feature enhanced power management technology.
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(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.
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SINGAPORE - December 6, 2004 â-MD announced the AMD Opteron processor family will include AMD PowerNow! technology with Optimised Power Management (OPM) in the first half of 2005.
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AMD&#39;s Opteron processors will soon be able to take advantage of the same powermanagement technology the company has already built into its desktop and laptop processors.
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According to AMD, the Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3000+ is the first processor manufactured with AMD&#39;s 90-nanometer technique, a semiconductor process designed to enable higher performance without increased power consumption.
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It's history, perched on a fence Analysis Vendors, vendors everywhere: Yep, all the major players turned up in Barcelona at the EMEA launch of AMD's so-called "native" quad-core Opteron processor chip. Well okay, nearly all.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Advanced Micro Devices' move to cut overhead costs by outsourcing its chip manufacturing business may backfire in the long run, according to several analysts who have downgraded the company's stock. AMD is struggling it keep its head above water after posting losses of $611 million and $574 million for its past two quarters. The company has also drawn criticism for its manufacturing, with recent reports that it will delay the full-volume launch of the "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron server chip from July to October. That would hobble AMD in its effort to compete with surging rival Intel. Although AMD's Opteron has won over many users of Intel's Xeon server chips since its launch in 2003, that trend is now in a sharp reversal, according to a June 13 report from Jon Peddie Research. In the market for workstation processors, AMD had pushed Intel's share down to 87.6 percent in the first quarter of 2006, but Intel has rebounded since then, reaching 92 percent share in the first quarter of 2007. The building pressure recently prompted some analysts to predict that AMD might stop manufacturing any chips at all and convert to a fully outsourced business model as soon as 2008. AMD said that rumor had come from a "speculative" Goldman Sachs report, but confirmed that the company is trying to focus its efforts on developing chips instead of manufacturing them, according to AMD spokesman Drew Prarie. AMD currently has a deal giving it access to IBM's chip fabrication plant in East Fishkill, New York. Under that arrangement, AMD can perform much of its research and development without having to incur the cost of owning its own manufacturing plant, he said. "We're looking to find ways to extend that model beyond research and development to the full range of the manufacturing supply chain," Prarie said Monday. "That could run the range from increasing the amount of processors we send out for chartered manufacturing, and could also include things like establishing partnerships on the manufacturing side." AMD has already taken some steps in this direction. In 2006, AMD announced a plan to give Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing a heavier load, asking the firm to begin making the new 65-nanometer scale Athlon chips and other processors. And in May, AMD announced that it hadÂ awarded the job of manufacturing its newest graphics chips to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Now the company may be preparing to expand that model, according to a June 17 report from Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung. AMD is on the verge of making a "transformational move" such as outsourcing a larger share of low-end processors to TSMC, selling a share of the manufacturing capacity in its Fab 30 chip-making plant in Dresden, Germany, or even selling a share in its planned $3.2 billion chip plant in Saratoga County, New York, Yeung wrote. Despite AMD's insistence that such an arrangement would simply allow it to stay in the chip business while cutting costs, the uncertainty makes Wall Street analysts nervous. The Citigroup report lowered its estimate of AMD's future revenue from $1.3 billion to $1.1 billion for the second quarter, and from $5.8 billion to $5.6 billion for the full year of 2007. Those figures would represent a flat performance compared to AMD's performance last year, with $1.22 billion of revenue in the second quarter of 2006 and $5.6 billion for the full year. "We are again lowering AMD estimates, this time for 2Q07 (we had previously lowered 2H07), reflecting our field checks suggesting current conditions are weak," Yeung wrote. While Citigroup recognizes that AMD could be moving away from its own manufacturing and that could help the company cut costs, "we remain on hold for the shares given near-term weakness," he wrote. In contrast, Yeung said Intel would continue to enjoy a competitive advantage thanks to theÂ potential delay of AMD's Barcelona chips, the rising popularity of Intel's new Santa Rosa notebook platform, and the continued sales of Core-family chips for desktop PCs.
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Chop, chop AMD has followed up last week's Opteron price cuts with a round of reductions applied to its Athlon-brand processors. The latest cuts affect both single- and dual-core versions of the 64-bit CPU family.â¦
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) showcased its dual-core x86 Opteron microprocessor this week. The upcoming dual-core CPU for the enterprise enviornment is expected to debut in mid-2005 and was housed in a HP ProLiant DL585 server.
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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.
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In an effort to help enterprise users get a handle on power and heat issues associated with new server designs that pack more processing punch in smaller spaces, Advanced Micro Devices on Monday announced that systems built with its 32/64-bit Opteron
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(InfoWorld) - AMD will delay its launch of the Barcelona quad-core Opteron server chip from its expected date in July until October, setting the company back in its effort to compete with new processors from Intel, according to analyst reports. Processor companies make more money selling server chips than desktop or laptop chips, so the move will hit AMD's 2007 earnings hard, pushing the company to lose $2.59 per share instead of only $2.48 per share, according to a report released Tuesday by Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung. "Barcelona is generally viewed to beÂ AMD's best opportunity to stem server share loss to Intel. While AMD's recent notebook win at Toshiba may balance any negative revenue implications to our current model, Barcelona's delay has negative implications for AMD's gross margin," Yeung wrote. His estimate is a larger loss than the consensus Thomson Financial forecast that AMD will lose $2.47 per share for 2007. The news comes at a bad time for AMD, which has promised for months that it would launch the chip in the second half of 2007,Â helping the company to rebound from the effects of a price war with Intel. AMD is already hurting,Â posting a $611 million first-quarter lossÂ in April, following on the heels of theÂ $574 million loss reported in JanuaryÂ for fourth quarter earnings last year. Barcelona is the key to taking that fiscal burden off AMD's shoulders,Â AMD CEO Hector Ruiz said on May 3 at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Although Intel is several quarters ahead in improving its chip manufacturing capabilities, AMD stays competitive by creating more innovative designs, he said. AMD claims Barcelona will deliver better performance on memory-intensive applications than Intel's Clovertown quad-core Xeon server chips that have been on the market since November. AMD stuck to its guns on Wednesday, insisting that it is still on schedule, and pointing as evidence to itsÂ demonstration on Tuesday of prototype Barcelona chips in serversÂ from infrastructure partners Supermicro Computer, Tyan Computer, and Uniwide Technologies at theÂ Computex trade show in Taipei. "We remain on track for a summer 2007 launch with partners shipping platforms in the third quarter," said AMD spokeswoman Marian Kelley. She blamed the delay rumors on Cray's announcement Monday that it expects revenue to drop because of a delay in shipping its quad-core Cray XT4 systems. In fact, Cray was referring to AMD's midrange Budapest processor, not Barcelona, she said. "The guidance that we've been giving and that we're sticking to is that Budapest will follow Barcelona in the second half of 2007," Kelley said. Despite AMD's assurances, other analysts echoed the Citigroup report, saying they have heard similar news from server vendors, distributors and board makers. On May 30, another report called AMD's promise to launch Barcelona in mid-2007 "a head fake" since the chip will not be available at full volume until August at the earliest, according to a note from analyst Patrick Wang at Thomas Weisel Partners. In contrast, Intel is expected to succeed in shipping its Penryn processors in the late third quarter or early fourth quarter. That timing will allow Intel to essentially catch up to AMD and soften the blow of losing sales to customers who see a performance advantage in Barcelona, Wang said.
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Confusion in PowerEdge-land Who makes the Opteron processors going into Dell's latest rackable servers? AMD, you'd think, but a casual glance at the PC giant's website might leave you with the impression that the processors were produced by AMD's arch-rival, Intel.â¦
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Intel racked up some serious karmic debt when it schemed to run AMD out of the PC processor business. Xeon now languishes in Opteronâs shadow, which strikes me as just desserts for some nasty business.
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Blog: AMD announces price cuts for its desktop processors
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc.&#39;s announcement that its new PowerNow technology will be available on its Opteron line of processors could mean a lot to some enterprise customers.