Server Makers Show First Barcelona Systems
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Server makers are showing their first systems based on AMD's new quad-core Opteron chip, known as Barcelona.
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New server is designed to run AMD's upcoming Opteron chips.
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The first official benchmark test results for Intel's Tigerton series and AMD's Barcelona series were released by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. From a pure prowess perspective, neither the new quad-core Xeon MPs nor the new quad-core Opterons walk away with an all-around victory, with Intel's X7350 stealing the show in integer throughput, and AMD's 8350 winning the race in floating-point throughput.
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New initiatives aim to help businesses create server clusters for high-performance computing tasks.
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A distributed multi-protocol load testing tool.
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Company aims to ease server management headaches with PHP tool set. Also on tap: updated tools for Web developers.
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AMD has been demonstrating the industryâs first x86 dual-core processor at its Austin facilities on an HP ProLiant DL585 server powered by four dual-core Opteron processors manufactured on 90nm SOI process technology, the company announced today.
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The latest version of the server includes built-in virtualization technology.
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Barcelona's MareNostrum isn't the fastest supercomputer on Earth, but 20 teraflops with regular blade servers is nothing to sneer at.
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The fastest Mac supercomputer has gotten faster, thanks to an Xserve makeover.
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New Apple Xserve servers come with dual Intel Quad-Core Xeon CPUs and an unlimited client licence for the late3st Mac OS X Server.
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SAN FRANCISCO - It's easy to get the impression that the midrange Unix server is like a boxer near the end of a career - still packing a wallop, just no longer throwing knockout left hooks. But the truth is, new processor architectures, multi-core systems, and the ascension of x86 chips are giving these systems extra punch, and users plenty to think about as they plan their purchasing for the next few years.
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New ZebraHosts service lets data center admins deploy Apple machines in dedicated rack space.
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(InfoWorld) - AMD hopes to seize a larger share of the server chip market fromÂ its rival IntelÂ on Monday when it launches the Barcelona quad-core processor. AMD has been shipping the Quad-Core AMD Opteron chip to server vendors throughout August but will use its news conference in San Francisco to publicly announce those partnerships as well as prices and benchmark test results. The company plans to launch a 1.9GHz, 68-watt Barcelona chip that focuses on power efficiency, and a 2.0GHz, 95-watt version that focuses on price/performance, said Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president for the server and workstation division. In the fourth quarter, the company will follow that with a 2.3 GHz, 120-watt version for high-performance applications, and higher clock speeds for the first two chips. There is a lot at stake. After launching the original Opteron chip in 2003, the company enjoyed brisk demand as customers applauded the power-efficient performance of that 130-nanometer design process chip. But Intel soon got back in the fight as both companies built smaller, faster components, shrinking their chip scales to 90nm and adding a second core. AMD has endured disappointing results lately,Â posting losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars for recent quartersÂ and focusing its attention onÂ a merger with graphics chip maker ATI. At the same time, Intel claimed bragging rights to beating AMD to quad-core architecture andÂ 65nm scale chips with its ClovertownÂ server chip.Â Intel is also preparing to launch an even smaller-featured design in the fourth quarter with its 45nm Penryn chip. AMD says Barcelona is the answer to the Intel challenge. The chip is designed with all four cores on a single die as opposed to Intel's design of joining two dual-core Woodcrest Xeon chips, Allen said. Even more important, AMD upgraded each core from 64-bit floating point performance to 128-bit and retained its Direct Connect architecture and on-chip memory controller to avoid bottlenecks in data flow, he said. Thanks to that design, the new chip will provide better performance while using the same amount of power, he said. A customer could upgrade a Hewlett-Packard ProLiant DL 385 server from AMD's dual-core to quad-core Opteron and gain faster operation with the same power and cooling demands. "Clovertown will look very anemic, especially as we bring out new frequencies. Customers really don't buy nanometers. What they care about is performance and benchmarking," said Allen. "That Direct Connect architecture is very helpful with virtualization, running multiple OSes, and other applications pulling more data than can be held in on-chip memory." Despite those advantages, AMD has missed out on a spike in market demand driven by a need to upgrade to servers capable of performing virtualization, one analyst said. "A lot of people view this as six months late or more," said Doug Freedman, managing director for research at American Technology Research. "Expectations got ahead of themselves, and some people viewed this as a potential savior for AMD after their server share topped out at the end of last year going up against Intel's dual-die quad-core. Now the feeling is this launch isn't robust enough in terms of samples shipped, design wins, and the complete food chain." To recover, AMD will have to quickly increase its production and release faster versions of Barcelona to improve the chip's availability for a range of applications, Freedman said. Intel executives say they are pressing the lead. "We are very confident, at least on the DP [dual processor] side, that we will have leadership across most of the benchmarks versus Barcelona," said Adesh Gupta, regional platform architecture manager at Intel Asia-Pacific's Server Platforms Group. "There are a small percentage of benchmarks which are floating-point based where we know that they have an advantage and that's an area which we will see them talk about a lot.... If you look at the broader spectrum of applications at the enterprise, we have a significant lead today, and we believe we will have that lead with Clovertown, and once we have Harpertown with 45nm we will extend that lead further," Gupta said. However, some vendors say there is room in the market for both chips. Each processor has its own strengths, said Dell CEO Michael Dell in remarks to financial analysts at the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York on Wednesday. Based on early tests, Dell said, a server using Barcelona chips is faster at running floating-point applications than a computer with Intel's Clovertown chips, but Clovertown is faster than Barcelona at running integer instructions. "So depending on the applications you run, or your theories of computer science, one of those servers may be the best for you. It is simply unacceptable for a company of Dell's size to have only one of those choices," Dell said.
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The new Xeon M600 and Opteron M605 run Windows Server 2003 and Linux, and bundle OpenManage plus energy management tools.
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AMD Opteron servers prove more power-efficient than Xeon-powered servers in tests.
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InfoWorld - AMD hopes to seize a larger share of the server chip market from&#160;its rival Intel&#160;on Monday when it launches the Barcelona quad-core processor.