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IBM Opts for AMD
ExE122 writes "Since the unveiling of the low-cost, low-energy AMD Operton in 2003, Intel has been struggling in the server-grade processor insdustry. Now, IBM has announced their decision to use the AMD Opteron processor in their new line of BladeCenter servers. System x3455, x3655 and x3755 rack-mount servers, two-way Bladecenter LS21, and four-way LS41 blade servers sporting the new AMD processors have already been announced. IBM will continue this transition over the next three months.
From the article:
"IBM's choice is by all means an important victory over rival Intel, which is struggling to sell the remaining deposit of server processors before the general acceptance of Woodcrest X5100 chips. Unfortunately for Intel, at the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro had 26 per cent of the market for servers built on personal computer chips, more than double its share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research."
Could this be lights out for Intel?"
From the article:
"IBM's choice is by all means an important victory over rival Intel, which is struggling to sell the remaining deposit of server processors before the general acceptance of Woodcrest X5100 chips. Unfortunately for Intel, at the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro had 26 per cent of the market for servers built on personal computer chips, more than double its share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research."
Could this be lights out for Intel?"
Sigs cause cancer.
You'd think that with AMD sponsoring Slashdot, they could at least spell 'Opteron' right once or twice in stories...
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
You just opened the floodgates, Mister. But yes, I love AMD - look at my sig for the sake of /.
Intel is going nowhere, however - there are far too many consumer-oriented PC corps out there that adore Intel. And sheesh, AMD has been on the short end for so long, it's hard to imagine that a corp like Intel couldn't wait it out, too.
--I gots 99 problems but a new machine ain't one!
AMD! Asus! Whoot! 6 years!
Could this be lights out for Intel?
No. No it could not.
If you're going to be elitist, it would help to be elite.
Intel are still ahead in market share, and have just released some very competitive chips.
I'm an AMD supporter, but the near future is them trying to hold the ground they've recently taken, not expanding further.
(And Intel probably the reserves to stuff up again, be uncompetitive for a few years, and still make a comeback with the next generation of chips.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It's kind of odd how everybody is jumping on the AMD train when Intel is finally having viable products with their new architecture (For instance, Dell finally jumping on board).
Paul Otellini : "AMD has 26% of the market? Well, screw that - if we can't have 75% of the market, we're outta here. Call up Slashdot, let 'em know we're closing the doors tomorrow."
Better question: Is this lights out for the Power line?
IBM seems to be giving up on their Power cores. That's what concerns me, because it looked like they had a big shot of gaining territory in the gaming-and-entertainment market.
Let's see... 100 minus 26... carry the 9... that leaves 74% share left for Intel, right? I'm going to have to go with "No, doesn't look like lights out."
Please, quit it with the retarded questions at the end of the article summaries.
--
Carnage Blender : Meet interesting people. Kill them.
Of course, as we all know, THIS the year that Linux takes over the desktop, and MS goes down the drain.
Gee, I love living in Slashdot Land!
You know this switch was coming sooner or later. AMD already does a lot of their serious R&D at IBM. They'll be the same company within 5 years.
Core 2 Duo is posed to dominate the desktop market unless AMD comes back with a strong chip ASAP.
It seems to me intel will gain back some lost market share with the Core 2 Duo.
It's ridiculous to add the "end of intel" comment to the end of the article.
All things are subject to interpretation, whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and n
I think TFA misses an important point. It's not whether Intel or AMD captures the entire market, or what market share these two players have. With only two major players, I'd say the main problem is that we have too little competition, not too much!
Regards,
Art
Is this the Apple Curse coming to fruition? Any chip supplier Apple picks seems to constantly have problems. It happened with Motorola, it happened with IBM, now Intel for goodness sake! Let's just hope Intel doesn't start having major production issues out of the blue.
Except I was thinking that even if Intel chucked their whole x86 line, they still make a boatload of other chips. Like XScale, for instance. Their previous line of ARM processors (the SA-1100 family) are freaking *everywhere*.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Even with their new Woodcrest CPU finally making it out of vapourware status, Intel has no real answer to Opteron in the 4P and above server space. Itanium is a failed venture that is on life support. It often performs worse than Opteron systems much much cheaper, so no hope there.
Intel might regain a little marketshare in the 1P/2P server space with Woodcrest, but they're still in full retreat in the Enterprise market as more and more companies move to 4P+ servers.
Seeing as AMD are releasing Socket F and Rev G chips soon, much of the performance advantage Woodcrest might have had will vanish quickly.
I recently Googled "AMD Quad Core" and clicked on the first or second result and read the article. If this article holds true, AMD could very well blow Intel off the map and into orbit. The article said that the recent buyout of chip maker ATI is part of a grander strategy by AMD to take a bite out of Intel. The article said that the current CPU dye made by any manufactuer contains 18 individual components, minus the cores, to create the CPU dye. AMD's 4x4 quad core slated to launch in early '07 is being rebuilt from the ground up. AMD is going to attempt to modularize a CPU dye to allow for quicker, cheaper, and easier manufactuering. By that they mean that each individual component will be interchangeable and have an on dye socket to be plugged into. A good visual image of this is building blocks. Identically shaped and sized units rearranged to create a new structure. The article said that the only difference hardware wise between an Opteron and an 64 X2 is 3 components. If AMD is successful in modularizing the CPU dye, this article estimates that AMD will have "entry level" 4x4 CPU's in 8000-9000+ range avaliable to CONSUMERS for around $400-$600 and industry quality models at around $1000 on the low end. Only time will tell if this is true, but for me, I hope it comes true as I'm being asked at school by the teachers as to who will have the better CPU in the future and my answer is "AMD of course.".
IBM already has bladecenters with opterons... why is this news? How is this a defeat for Intel? IBM is basically announcing a refresh of their current lineup... you can bet your ass they'll be doing the same thing when intel rolls out the new Xeon in full force as well.
Remember kids, just because you like to pull for the underdog, doesn't mean it's OK to make false statements about the king.
Intel dead? Have you people been living in a cave for the past few months?
Look at some benchmarks. The new 5100 series Xeons with the Woodcrest core have been out since June, and a dual Woodcrests crush dual Opterons in almost every test. AMD's only hope at the moment is HyperTransport, with which they rule the market for 4-socket servers (Intel's old-fashioned FSB doesn't really scale to 4 sockets). But thanks to Core2 (Conroe and Woodcrest), Intel has taken over the 1-socket and 2-socket market. Prepare to see AMD's market share take a nosedive.
I am generally an AMD fanboy, but my next system will use Intel chips. Now that Core2 is here, I am simply not interested in an antiquated AMD chip which can only complete an SSE2 operation once every two cycles. Until the K8L comes out, it's Intel Inside for me.
Wow, AMD Really are spnning evrything they can get their hands on in the last few weeks - could it be that they are trying to divert attention away from something?
Let me think.. what was AMDs last real news?? When is the next major milestone in their processor lineup?
What goes around comes around.. Intel have been busy beavers for a while, relying on their rapidly aging netburst architecure, and hurting for it, while they got their next generation in order - perhaps AMD should have done a bit more work to have an answer ready... oh well.
IBM of course will do anything to divert server attention away from Intel, due to the fact that they have their own large-systems architecture to support - Power, and Intels ia64 is a competitor, whereas AMD have nothing even close to that market - of course IBM want people to like AMD and avoid Intel...
I think the correct technical term is 'Duh!'
Could this be lights out for Intel?
Do the editors really think that adding stupid little phrases like this to every article enhance the experience? Why do we need to read this every time that something happens that gives an avatage to Intel or AMD? Sheesh, give us a break.
Minnesota twins batters hit 2 home runs in yesterdays game. Could this spell apocalptic doom and drawn out painful deaths for the New York Yankees?
AMD needs competition just as Intel does. More competition = good.
Everyone keeps talking about K8L. If they can deliver it in the short term (hah!), great, but what they really need is K8 Rev. G.
A current AM2 K8 dual core with 512k+512k cache is similar in size to Conroe with a 15% (roughly) disadvantage in performance (at common price brackets). Moving to 65nm will drastically reduce die sizes, allowing AMD to squeeze more chips on each silicon wafer, even compared to Conroe.
Consequently, AMD will be able to sell their chips to us at really cheap prices while still making a good profit, building a war-chest for when K8L faces off against CxQ. Then we repeat the whole process again when Intel moves to 45nm.
I think having a 4m L2 cache might be a bit of a boat anchor around Intel's neck when it comes to manufacturing. Time will tell.
Yes, of course. Absolutely, indubitably this is the end for Intel. Anyone who argues otherwise is clearly a fool, an Intel phanboi, or someone with a lot of Intel stock.
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You sir, are a xenophobe.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I thought IBM were chucking the new Uber-chip the Cell into blades and this was going to revolutionise the world [/hype], did it not work? Or haven't they actually put these on sale yet?
I would have though that this would at least muddy the waters a bit with the whole Intel vs AMD war on IBM servers.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
when a slashdot editor writes "could this be lights out for companyX" when companyY is a sponsering vendor.. I have a feeling you guys are heading twards shark-jumping waters fast.
this is a design win for AMD, yes. and an important one at that. but this is a far cry from lights out for intel. jeezz.
Intel's own tech documents state that their famous "Micro-Ops Fusion" does not work in 64-bit mode. This feature is one of the main features that make the Core2 architecture as fast as it is. Losing this knocks performance down around 5 to 6 percent, which puts Opteron just that much closer.
xbitlabs has some more details.
No one is trying to say that Woodcrest isn't a good 64-bit chip. We are just telling it like it is: woodcrest does not gain much from 32 -> 64-bit code (in some cases it is a bit slower), while the Opteron gains decently almost across the board.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
For 4-way MP, one of the reasons that IBM Xeons (like x366) have been excellent performers is the sophisticated memory controller hub chipset ("X architecture", the 'Hurricane' chipset) which has an advanced L4 cache and snoop filter integrated. What IBM now calls the x3850 (basically same as x366) still has this advantage - and combined with the new Intel 'Tulsa' Xeon MP chips with huge L3 caches, IBM should probably outperform their generic design x3655 Opteron (and other Opteron 4-way boxes). The real reason, I suspect, why IBM is doing this is not so much technical (they have felt their Xeon MPs were competative against Opteron 4-ways) but that there is now an AMD market mindshare which had created a disadvantage in some corporate accounts that had adopted the other AMD 4-ways (generally the HP 585) and were happy with it - IBM felt shutout wherever AMD fanboys became dominiant in IT thinking.
In the 2-way DP space the new IBM x3650 with Xeon 5100 series Woodcrest (and any other Woodcrest based DP) will be as good or better than anything AMD throws at the DP space in 2006 -incl the new 2.8GHz F socket stuff.
AMD Operton - Doesn't that run on Nucular energy ?