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AMD to Demo '8-socket' Dual-Core Opteron System
flynn_nrg writes "AMD will make the first public demonstration of a system built out of its dual-core processors today, the result of a strategy first made public almost a year ago. Two-core Opteron chips aren't due to ship until the middle of 2005, but AMD will have four of parts running inside an HP ProLiant DL585 server at its Austin plant later today."
No, 4-sockets, each with dual core CPU.
4 procs, dual cores? Kickass. A short read on implementation differences between AMD64 & Intel's 64. http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17906
...and you've eaten your pen. simply stunning.
In general, power dissapation scales in frequency with n^2, in multiple cores with n. So for the power of a processor 2x as fast, you could probably deliver 2^2=4x with 4 cores.
Granted, this is only true if the task is parallellizable, but with todays multi-tasking computers I could at least use two cores. (If main task is blocked, there's probably a dozen other background processes who'd like a few cycles).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Not really. Opteron is part of HP's strategy for 64-bit computing everywhere.
The roadmap looks something like this:
- Tandem (NSK) will eventually turn to Itanium (as soon as lockstep is deployed and working fine);
- Alpha and PA-RISC will evolve into Integrity (Itanium2);
- Proliants (IA-32) will evolve into Opteron.
It's just that 32-bit computing is taking its last breath, and it's time to move on.
Now that looks like a smart move.
HP has several (6 actually) server product lines. They will probably use opterons in their high-volume/lower-profit proliant server line. However they have firmly commited to ditching pa-risc, mips, and alpha for their other 5 server platforms. The high-end/high-profit/low-volume systems are largely independant of the proliant group.
HP doesn't view itanium and opteron as an either/or proposition. Given their product porfolio, it's quite reasonable to use both. Itanium is fast and expensive, a good fit for a 128-way superdome. Opteron is pretty-fast and inexpensive, a good fit for a 4-way proliant.
Socket implies the physical chip. An 8-socket system using a dual core chip implies 16 processors. The poster really meant a 4-socket dual core system.
I have been building systems for some time, I have made many nForce3 systems and have never experienced any hdd or usb noise. Then again my company only sells performance cooled computers, could make a diffrence for sound seepage. I would recommend only using a 10K Sata Raptor drive, since they have been around it's all I use. The real world performance gain only relates to about 2K 3dmarks (3dmark2k1), however overall system speed and performance is greatly enhanced, especially if you are going to skimp and not put 1GB or more of RAM, that faster swap file is quite apparent. If your worried about losing HDD space get a DVD-RW drive at less then 70 bucks for a nice one, it only makes sense to store your stuff on a DVD anyway, for the performance boost.
On another note I should mention if you are into gaming the amd64 core does far more than a high end video card. Obviously the fusion of the two is stellar, however if you have to choose get the cheaper $100 video card and focus on the amd64 core (for all you skimpers out there) with at least 1GB of RAM, you will be very happy with the result.
I wonder if somebody could explain why dual-core CPUs are a good idea. If it's a pair of cores on a single piece of silicon, it seems it would take the same silicon as two separate cpus, so where's the benefit?
Less packaging overhead, and faster communication between cores (on-die bandwidth and latency are far, far better than any motherboard's crossbar's bandwidth and latency).
You also have less contention over memory, for single-chip systems with multiple cores vs. multi-chip systems. Instead of having to muck about with cache coherence across a bus, the chip looks like a single processor as far as the memory subsystem is concerned, with coherence operations only involving the first one or two cache levels on-die.
yield decreases roughly exponentially with die size, which argues for 2 separate cpus.
Processes are optimized so that you can build a chip with 1-2 square centimetres of area with reasonable yield (as this is what chip manufacturers demand). This has been pretty constant (or if anything, has been increasing). However, with each design generation, the number of transistors available in this area has doubled. We're now at the point where we can get high yields on chips with enough transistors that multi-core designs make sense.
A chip with N cores also doesn't take N times as much area as a single-core chip, as the lowest levels of cache aren't duplicated (just L1 and usually now L2). So overhead is reasonable, and the real estate is there. It makes a lot of sense to use it.
Look for a report this afternoon on AMDZone.com.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com