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Behind the Closed Doors of AMD's Chip Production
rokali writes "Tom's Hardware is running an article
on AMD's chipmaking procedure, plants, and future. Check out the pictures
of Fab 36, their new plant slated to open in 2006, which will put of the next
generation of 65nm chips. From the article: 'Currently, AMD's devices in
Dresden are still produced on 200 mm wafers; the new APM 3.0 using 300 mm wafers
won't be ramped up until Fab 36 opens. Production startup at the new facility
is slated for the beginning of 2006, at which point the company will have invested
an additional $2.5 billion.'"
I'm suprised they let Tom's even close, seeing as they've always been Intel fanboys.
Maybe it's a case of keeping an eye on the enemy...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
Hah, no they aren't. They are cheap in comparison to Intel's 64-bit offerings, but are definitely NOT cheap in comparison to Apple's/IBM's/(hell, I'm tempted to put Sun's) 64-bit offerings.
A single G5 will run you about $1500, including the whole computer to wrap around it, ram and all. You can go up from there, but the limiting factor is a two processor chassis. But the fact is, 4 XServes be cheapter to assemble, run, and maintain than the processors used to make one 8-way Opteron server. You can argue all that you like that shared memory will make these Opterons faster than the G5's, but in that case, you could simply throw twice the number of processors at the problem using G5's, with a relatively equal price (after you count hardware, networking equipment, etc).
The fact is, Apple really won the cheap high end server market, and they're starting to get market acceptance there as well (as far as Low-end super computing goes). Any company thinking about building a super computer really should look at their options. The only thing I think that could be really prohibitive, would be the need to run Windows on the systems, which would then make the Opteron option cheaper, but without 64-bit support, their system will hardly live up to its capabilities.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush