IBM Says &#39;Go&#39; on Dual-Core Opteron Servers
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IBM has given AMD&#39;s recently announced dual-core Opteron microprocessor its stamp of approval, announcing that in mid-2005 it will ship a version of its e326 server equipped with the chips.
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Ziff Davis - IBM next month will finish transitioning its core pSeries and iSeries server lines to the Power5 chip when it starts shipping three new high-end systems, two of which support as many as 64 processors.
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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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IBM has introduced two new Unix-based servers aimed at small- to mid-size businesses. Based on the Power5 microprocessor, the new servers join IBM&#39;s On Demand Express product line, and are priced starting at $3,993.
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IBM next month will finish transitioning its core pSeries and iSeries server lines to the Power5 chip when it starts shipping three new high-end systems, two of which support as many as 64 processors.
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After its recent delays and missteps, chip maker sets its sights on a dual-core future.
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IBM expects to ship a new 32-processor server based on Intel's Xeon processors in the first half of next year and may begin selling its first high-density "blade" server based on Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD's) Opteron processor, a company executive said in an interview Tuesday.
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It said it has demonstrated a working version of the technology based on its Opteron chip. By Darrell Dunn. The shift to dual-core microprocessors continues to accelerate.
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Sun to follow? Exclusive AMD has secured yet another major partner win thanks to Opteron. Starting with the Power7 processor, IBM will give up on making its own Unix/RISC box motherboards. Instead, it will plug the Power chips directly into slightly modified Opteron boards in an effort to save money.â¦
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A 2x joint ISSCC At a time when rivals have given up on juicing their processors, IBM plans to crank the heck out of Power6. The dual-core chip due out by mid-2007 will come in "just shy" of 5GHz and flaunt double the performance of today's Power5.â¦
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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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AMD has raised the stakes with Intel as the pair prepare to do battle over dual-core processors following last week&#39;s demonstration of a dual-core x86 Opteron.
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(InfoWorld) - Newly released processors from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel will reinvigorate the market for high-end servers, according to one server analyst. The biggest impact ofÂ Intel's recently released Xeon 7300 chips, known as Tigerton, andÂ AMD's just-launched Quad-Core Opteron processor, called Barcelona, will be felt in the market for high-end servers with four processors, called 4P systems, said Rajnish Arora, research director for servers and workstations at IDC Asia-Pacific. The 4P market has lagged in recent months because two-way, or 2P, servers based on quad-core processors from Intel offered the same number of cores as 4P systems using dual-core chips from Intel and AMD. But that is set to change with the release of the Xeon 7300 and Quad-Core Opteron. "Both Tigerton and Barcelona will reinvigorate the 4P market," Arora said. The Xeon 7300 and Quad-Core Opteron are the first quad-core x86 processors designed for 4P systems. Previously, both Intel and AMD offered only dual-core processors for this segment of the market. The introduction of these chips allows server makers to build systems with a total of 16 cores in four processors, double the amount of cores that was previously possible. "It's a very powerful, scalable platform now," he said. The increased processing power of these systems will allow users to consolidate their x86 servers, since fewer servers can offer more performance. "They are far more powerful than 4P servers sold two years ago," Arora said. While fewer servers are required, the prices of servers will start to rise as users demand systems with more memory to handle virtualization workloads. "Companies are looking for more richly configured systems," he said. IDC is owned by International Data Group, the parent company of IDG News Service.
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Advanced Micro Devices demonstrated its first dual-core microprocessors today using an HP ProLiant DL585 server running four dual-core Opteron chips.
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Opteron to gain power preservation tech - and other goodies
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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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AMD used the Fall Processor Forum to provide more details about its dual-core Opteron architecture which is scheduled to be released by mid of 2005.