AMD Packs Six-Core Opteron Inside 40 Watts

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."

Comments

Hardware

[Tubal-Cain]

The six-core AMD Opteron EE...is designed for 2P servers...

All I really want to know is: can you install it in a toaster?

Re:Hardware

[pla]

With AMD's reputation for producing hot-running processors

What reputation? Since the days of the original Thunderbird core (which still ran cooler than comparable P4s, though admittedly didn't have meltdown prevention circuitry), AMD has consistently given Intel a run for their money in that regard.

Now, the Atom has finally brought Intel back to the realm of "reasonable", but it doesn't seriously compete with AMD, it competes with VIA (and poorly at that - The Nano blows the Atom away, clock for clock and Watt for Watt).

Don't get me wrong, Intel has certainly regained my respect when it comes to performance, but to call AMD the toaster requires ignoring the past 10 years.

Not a good idea...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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....

TFS is a bit light on details

[clone53421]

Here are a few quick bits from the article:

• Full name: Opteron 2419 EE
• Cost: $989
• Begins shipping: Today
• Power consumption: 40 watts
• Clock speed: 1.8 GHz
• Compatable with DDR-2 memory (cheaper than DDR-3; AMD claims this could save about $1000 per server)
• Compare to the 2377 EE, 40-watt quad-core @ 2.3 GHz: approximately 1/3 more performance from the new six-core chip.

Re:TFS is a bit light on details

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Re:TFS is a bit light on details

[idiotnot]

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.)

Re:TFS is a bit light on details

[warrior]

It's actually more complicated than that. The six-core chips have the ability to configure up to a quarter of the 6MB L3 cache as a probe filter. This keeps most snoop traffic from reaching down into the L2 and L1 caches of the other cores on the same die and all cores on other die in a multi-socket system. The result is better memory latency and improved memory bandwidth. Here's a link: http://techreport.com/articles.x/16448

2P

[Enry]

Do they mean Dual Processor? I've never heard the term 2P server before.

Re:2P

[Kjella]

I've seen it before, usually used in a context where you have 2P, 4P, 8P = dual-processor, quad-processor, octo-processor machines because noone wants to go around remembering what that should be abbreviated like. Of course, with cores per chip varying widely just saying you have a DP/2P machine says little these days.

Re:Gaming/compiler performance?

[clone53421]

6 x 1.8 = 10.8
2 x 3.2 = 6.4

If you can take full advantage of the six cores, there's a lot more computational power despite the slower clock speed.

Re:2P ...

[lagfest]

or not 2P, that is the question.

It might get unpleasant if you hold it in too long.

Re:Gaming/compiler performance?

[WiglyWorm]

This is a server processor. If you are either gaming or compiling on your server, you are doing something wrong. My servers here at work tend to do a high volume of low processor intensity transactions... therefore, more cores (and more simultanious transactions) is far more important than high speed.

Also, by shoehorning this into a 40w envelope, they're obviously going for power efficiency over horsepower. Interesting fact: power usage is one of the largest costs of a data center, and it's growing.

Re:Gaming/compiler performance?

[Spatial]

CPU speed has stagnated

It hasn't stagnated at all. You're equating cycle rate with performance, that's incorrect.

Each processor architecture does a different amount of work each cycle. Counting only the number of cycles is like comparing the running speed of two men by the number of steps they take each minute - but one guy may be a midget and the other eight feet tall. Clock speeds remain similar but performance doesn't correlate.

For example, a 3Ghz P4 isn't even half as fast as one core from a 3Ghz Core i7. The number of instructions per clock have been continuously improving with each new architecture.
Phenom is faster than Athlon X2. Phenom II is faster than Phenom.

Core 2 is faster than Pentium 4. Core i7 is faster than Core 2.

So you can have what you want - improvement continues in both per-core performance and the number of cores.

Re:Gimme MHz

[Bakkster]

That worked great for the Pentium 4, didn't it? Faster clock != more instructions per second. The only way to get close to 4GHz on the Pentium was with a 31-stage pipeline. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_pipeline

This means, on an instruction like if(a+b>c){}, the actual branch gets delayed by about 20 cycles if the processor guesses incorrectly whether the if statement should execute or not. Add the overhead due to such a fast clock (the P4 could only have 4 logic gates per pipeline stage due to the speed).

I'll keep my more efficient, better laid out processors over raw GHz, thank you very much.