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AMD Packs Six-Core Opteron Inside 40 Watts

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the not-a-power-of-two dept.

adeelarshad82 writes "Advanced Micro Devices has launched a low-power version of its six-core Opteron processor in time for VMworld, a key virtualization show that opens on Monday. The six-core AMD Opteron EE consumes 40 watts, and is designed for 2P servers, among the most popular in the virtualized server space."

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Not a good idea... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But with a 40 watt chip you could get that into a laptop, if you felt like it. Not the thinnest, lightest, or quietest laptop around; but plenty of 14-15 inch units under two inches thick(though often not far under) were running P4s at least that power hungry back before P-Ms became cheap enough for common use.

    If you were willing to deal with the size and weight of those high-end gamer laptops, the ones with quad core i7s and SLI, you could probably build a 17-inch dual socket system....

  2. Re:TFS is a bit light on details by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Compare to the 2377 EE, 40-watt quad-core @ 2.3 GHz: approximately 1/3 more performance from the new six-core chip.

    Depends on what kind of server. If you're talking about a Web server, IIS 5.1 and later or Apache 2.x and better with multithreading on, yes. If you're talking about Apache 1.x or 2.x without multithreading, or some older versions of IIS, no.

    --
    My blog
  3. Re:TFS is a bit light on details by idiotnot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The important information FTFA is here:

    "AMD also estimated that the power consumption for a fully populated 42U rack would be 9.2 KW using the six-core Opteron 2425 HE, a 55-W part. Replacing those chips with the 2419 EE would require 7.5 KW, about an 18 percent power savings."

    That's just in the rack consumption. I would imagine these probably run cooler, too, which will help with HVAC costs.

    AMD seems to be doing a better job shrinking down dated designs at this point. While Intel is selling the Atom, which is undoubtedly cooler and less power-hungry, it's still based on a very old CPU design, which isn't up to heavy computing tasks. AMD, OTOH, has now established a pretty good record of taking mainline processors, and developing lower-power versions. They scaled down what used to be a pretty hot Athlon core (Thunderbird) to the Geode (as used in the OLPC). They followed that with a 45W Athlon 64 X2. Now the Opteron. Intel does have a 35W Conroe, but it's in Celeron cripple-mode badging, a shadow performance-wise, of the original C2Ds that initially came out on that core.

    I hope that AMD does release a desktop version of this, but I don't know if they could keep it profitable ($900+ eek.)