AMD readies security, virtualisation features for 2006
629470
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) plans to build security and virtualisation features into its server processors by 2006, the company said Friday during its annual analyst event.
750151
(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems is sprucing up its Solaris 10 operating system with security and virtualization improvements. Today's release of Solaris 10 11/06 is intended to make Solaris the most secure OS in existence, said Tom Goguen, Sun vice president of Solaris marketing. Next year, Sun will incorporate the open Xen hypervisor, for virtualization of an OS, into Solaris 10, Goguen said during a press briefing at Sun offices in San Francisco. The new release of Solaris is undergoing governmental Common Criteria Certification based on EAL (Evaluation Assurance Level) 4+ with three Protection Profiles. EAL is a global specification accepted by governments around the world, Goguen said. Featured in the new version of Solaris are trusted extensions, including multilevel security, for attaching a security profile or tag to every object dealt with by the OS, Goguen explained. With this level of security, the OS, for example, could permit someone viewing top secret and secret documents to cut and paste from the top secret to the secret document, but prevent the converse of this. Also featured in the 11/06 release is a "secure by default" capability. "Out of the box, everything is designed to be locked down," said Goguen. Sun's security enhancements are featured in both the commercial and open source variants of Solaris. The open source release is under the jurisdiction of opensolaris.org. The new release also boasts Solaris Containers virtualization technology that provides secure containers for running applications within the OS. The Containers software has been made more mobile, enabling the cloning of a container and the capability to move it to other systems or have it run on an array of systems. With Containers, a user might take a container running a Web server and clone it across multiple machines for more throughput. The Xen hypervisor technology due in the first half of next year will enable virtualization at the OS level. Among the perceived benefits include server consolidation, with users able to manage and use fewer servers. Improved utilization is enabled, Goguen said. "The dirty little secret in the x64 world is these systems are only running at about 10 percent utilization," Goguen said. The hypervisor would run under the control of Solaris, with OS capabilities such as DTrace, for analyzing OS and application behaviors, extended to it. Xen already is available with open source Solaris and will be commercially supported and available for commercial Solaris. Sun with its Solaris enhancements is not looking to upstage Linux in the open source community but does seek to battle commercial distributions of Linux, Goguen said. Sun also is vying with other commercial Unix platforms such as IBM AIX and HP's HP-UX, Sun officials noted. Although Sun in November released the Java programming language under the open source GNU General Public License version 2, the company still is pondering whether GPL is the right route for Solaris. Sun may offer Solaris under GPL 3 when that is finalized. GPL 3 addresses aspects such as the capability to combine software not based on the GPL. Solaris currently is offered under Sun's CDDL (Common Development and Distribution License), which is a Mozilla-style license offering more leeway in combining of code, according to Goguen. By releasing Solaris in an open source fashion, the company recognizes that technologies such as DTrace could be ported to new environments. In 2007, Sun also plans to make major plays to gain the business of so-called Web 2.0 startup companies, Sun officials said. These are being defined by Sun as companies using technology as an advantage for their businesses and who leverage the Web in a more read-write, interactive fashion as opposed to a read-only format. Additionally, Sun will make a stronger play into the X86 leveraging reseller channels, Goguen said.
388973
Phenom plus RD790 plus RV670 AMD looks set to give its 'Spider' high-end gaming platform its first major outing on 14 November - two days after Intel introduces its first 45nm 'Penryn' processors - Register Hardware has learned.â¦
586752
Dual-core version won't be available until 2006, chip maker says.
187742
AMD uses a technology called PowerNow to control power supply to the processor depending upon how much of the processing power is being used.
393240
(InfoWorld) - After watching its market share for the North American desktop PC market slip in a soft third quarter, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) will seek greater profits in 2007 throughÂ a new family of quad-core server chipsÂ and itsÂ acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI. "From a customer perspective, our integration is completed," said Henri Richard, AMD's chief sales and marketing officer during the company's annual analyst meeting in New York on Thursday. The companies still face several years of work to reach their goal of launching a combined processor and graphics chip called Fusion, but since closing the deal in October, they have already combined sales forces, supply chains and manufacturing facilities. In the short term, that will enable "the new AMD" to benefit whenÂ Microsoft's launch of the Windows VistaÂ OS sparks increased demand for visual capability in PCs. "Vista will change the paradigm of how people relate to their PCs and their criteria for selecting devices in 2007. That emphasis on a more visual experience will give AMD an edge," Richard said. AMD will also use the ATI acquisition to enter the fast-growing consumer electronics market in 2007, selling more video processing chips as demand rises for digital and high-definition TV, and selling more embedded chips as handheld devices converge the capabilities of cell phones and PCs, he said. AMD expects 19 percent growth for its chips used in the handheld sector and 44 percent growth in digital TVs. In the meantime, AMD will focus on its bread-and-butter product, the Opteron server chip. AMD plans to increase its revenue from microprocessors and chipsets by 20 percent in 2007, twice its prediction for the industry's growth rate. Chip-making rival Intel Corp. regained some ground in the desktop and server markets in recent months with its Core 2 Duo and dual-core Woodcrest Xeon chips. But AMD is poised to defend its turf. The company demonstrated a four-chip server using laboratory versions of its "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron chip at the meeting. Compared to AMD's own dual-core server chips, the design marks a 40 percent to 70 percent improvement in processing power and a 60 percent improvement in performance per watt. AMD plans to launch that chip for high-end servers in the second half of 2007, and update it with a "Shanghai" model in 2008. The company also plans to expand from its stable of processors designed for two, four and eight-chip servers in 2007 by launching "Budapest,"a quad-core Opteron chip designed for the single-processor servers used in the small business market. AMD will also improve its Turion and Sempron notebook chips, extending battery life with a more efficient "Hawk" model in 2007 and "Griffin" model in 2008. Together, those products will help return AMD to a better mix of products, Richard said. "We had been heavily reliant on the desktop sector. Now our server and laptop segments are growing faster, so we will soon reach the industry average." AMD has already started designing an eight-core server chip, set for release in three years, but has no plans to build chips with even more cores. "I think most people recognize the industry made a mistake getting into the megahertz wars, because we should have been more focused on the efficiency of the overall platform. And we would make another mistake if we got into a core war," said Phil Hester, AMD's chief technology officer. "You'd scratch your head if someone tried to sell you a 16- or 32-cylinder car and ask 'Why on earth do I need this?' You really need something whose capabilities are matched to what you'll use it for every day."
299799
OS features virtualization technologies intended to help companies get more use from their hardware.
158706
As this year comes to a close, AMD executives won&#39;t be sorry to put 2007 behind them. Battered by rising debt, shrinking market share and mounting financial losses, AMD is counting on a comeback in 2008. But can the struggling chip maker make good on its promises to customers and investors that better times lie ahead?Many of AMD&#39;s current troubles are tied to Barcelona, the first version of its Quad-Core Opteron processor.&#160;Repeated delays of this chip weakened AMD&#39;s finances and undermined confidence in the company&#39;s ability to deliver new products as promised. Rebuilding that lost confidence among corporate users and the financial community won&#39;t be easy and the company can ill afford further missteps.Over the next six months, there are several milestones that AMD must hit in order to get back on track. The first, and arguably most important, involves volume shipments of Barcelona, scheduled to happen during the first quarter. AMD desperately needs this chip to shore up flagging revenue from its commercial business and to take back ground lost recently to Intel in the server market.With a bug that was recently discovered in Barcelona fixed, AMD expects the latest version of the chip to start coming out of its manufacturing plants in January. Barcelona shipments are expected to rise throughout the first quarter, reaching &quot;full volumes&quot; and widespread availability of servers based on the chip during the second quarter, according to Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman.Another early milestone to look out for involves Shanghai, the second version of the Quad-Core Opteron chip that&#39;s set for volume production during the second half of 2008. AMD will produce Shanghai with a 45-nanometer manufacturing process that is one generation ahead of the 65-nanometer process used to make Barcelona.The numbers used to describe chip manufacturing processes refer to the average size of the smallest features that can be created on a chip. The smaller these features can be made, the better. Making these features smaller gives chip makers the ability to shrink the overall size of a chip, thereby reducing unit manufacturing costs, or to add new features. Chips made using a more advanced process may also consume less power and run faster than other versions. But semiconductor production is as much art as it is science, and moving to a more advanced process is fraught with risks.In the case of Shanghai, AMD will take advantage of the 45-nanometer process to triple the size of the Level 3 (L3) cache, from 2M bytes in Barcelona to 6M bytes. The L3 cache is a shared pool of memory that can be accessed by all four cores on the chip. Each core has 512K bytes of Level 2 (L2) cache. When data is moved out of the L2 cache, it moves into the L3 cache instead of main memory, meaning that the core can access this information more quickly than would otherwise be possible.Like AMD&#39;s existing server lineup, Barcelona and Shanghai also include an on-chip memory controller that further helps to increase performance.The memory structure used in the Quad-Core Opteron is different from Intel&#39;s server chips, which do not use an L3 cache and do not have an on-chip memory controller. Instead, Intel&#39;s quad-core Xeon 7300 server chips have 8M bytes of shared L2 cache. Since Intel processors actually pack two dual-core chips inside a single package, the L2 cache is divided into two parts, with 4M bytes on each silicon chip. Intel&#39;s processors do not use an on-chip memory controller.Boosting the Quad-Core Opteron&#39;s L3 cache with Shanghai should give AMD&#39;s quad-core chips the opportunity to stretch their legs, but the company has to make them first. The first working samples of Shanghai are due out of AMD&#39;s factory in Dresden, Germany, in January, according to recent remarks by Mario Rivas, executive vice president of AMD&#39;s Computing Products Group. If these samples arrive late or suffer from unexpected technical problems, this could delay volume production of Shanghai to late 2008 or even early 2009. Conversely, working samples that arrive on schedule and meet or exceed expectations would give AMD an added boost.Besides the server segment, there are a couple of key product milestones on AMD&#39;s roadmap for desktop and mobile processors that bear watching as well.For example, the company plans a first-quarter rollout of Perseus, a package of chips aimed at PCs for the corporate market and centered on a quad-core or triple-core processor and an RS780 or SB700 chipset. A dual-core version will also be rolled out. During the second quarter, AMD plans to roll out Puma, a chip package designed for notebooks. Puma is based on a new processor, called Griffin, expected to offer better performance and power efficiency than AMD&#39;s existing line of mobile processors.AMD plans to offer additional details of its plans and upcoming products at the Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas during January, Hughes said.
608288
Opteron to gain power preservation tech - and other goodies
242901
AMD has expanded its family of low-voltage mobile processors designed to offer high performance, security and mobility for thin and light notebooks.
706472
New BladeSymphony models can be linked into multiprocessor systems or subdivided with virtualization.
285700
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will use Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd.&#39;s manufacturing services to produce AMD&#39;s Opteron and Athlon 64 processors starting in 2006, adding production capacity as the
569498
New dual-core processors will make conventional software licensing models obsolete. What's next?
719369
Technical details of the new low-power mobile CPU, expected to ship this year, are being released at a chip conference this week.
603629
AMD and Intel processor road maps for 2007 show both companies are on the move to address these issues.
1861
Blog: AMD announces its quad core server chips will ship in August
298101
SUNNYVALE, Calif. and SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)â9 Novembre 2004--Chartered adopte la fabrication de prÃ©cision automatisÃ©e d&#39;AMD et prÃ©voit de fabriquer des processeurs AMD64 en 2006.