AMD Introduces New Opterons
New submitter Lonewolf666 writes "According to SemiAccurate, AMD is introducing new Opterons that are essentially 'Opteron-ized versions of Vishera.'
TDPs are lower than in their desktop products, and some of these chips may be interesting for people who want a cool and quiet PC."
And on the desktop side, ZDNet reports that AMD will remain committed to the hobbyist market with socketed CPUs.
AMD has huge advantages in the server market, I'm really surprised people are so stuck on XEON's.
You can't cram 64 XEON cores into a 1U. Not to mention Intel is spotty on their hardware virtualization extensions.
Intel has the lead in power consumption, sure. But if you're looking into running anything Xen, KVM or VMware in production, the cost savings AMD brings to the table makes them a competitive contender.
I'm in the market for a new Workstation. I've been looking at an Opteron instead of the desktop models. Primary reason being 16 cores on one chip, at a lower power consumption than the 8-core Desktop model.
Everyone knows that Intel is better, and competition in the CPU market is not a good thing. I hope AMD goes out of business soon, so that Intel can lower the price of their chips.
Oh lord not this again. First it was the netbook that was gonna kill "the big bad M$" then it was the tablet, then the phone, now you are gonna say embedded...really? Give it up Sparky, nobody is giving up their desktops or laptops for some 1Ghz ARM embedded in the TV, okay? Hell one of the Apple fanbois tried giving up ALL X86 for a month, just one month, and using nothing but his iPad and his iPhone...what happened? he gave up after a week and a half because it was hobbling him too damned much.
The ONLY thing you got right is that PCs have gotten insanely powerful, but you know what? Computers have been insanely powerful for most of the decade, hasn't stopped people from buying them. What HAS stopped people from buying them is the fact we are in the midst of a global recession (I would argue depression, but whatever) so people simply aren't spending money they don't absolutely have to and with their desktops sporting triples and quads, and their laptops sporting duals capable of 1080p? They really don't have to.
But the simple fact is even with an economy in the shitter we are talking 300 MILLION plus computers being sold, and yes nearly all of them running Windows, why? because that is where the software is. they don't want ersatz software, like Gimp for Photoshop, Tux Racer for DIRT, they want to use the billions of dollars worth of software they are sitting on, everything from Quickbooks to that God awful EasyShare your grandma loves so much, and NONE of that shit is gonna run on some embedded ARM chip.
And I hate to break the news to ya but ARM is about to slam face first into the thermal wall, just as X86 did half a decade ago. This is why the ARM Holdings Group have been talking about "dark silicon" for their last several press releases, and why Nvidia is now up to FIVE, count 'em, five cores in their Tegra chips, only ARM hit the thermal wall with a frankly shitty IPC so they are throwing more cores at it but as we saw with AMD there is only so much you can make up for IPC by throwing more cores at it, because most software today still don't thread for shit.
So X86 isn't going anywhere, Windows will be back up once Ballmer's fat ass is thrown out of the big chair and the abortion known as Win 8 is replaced by a much better Win 9 (Star Trek rule in play) and people will continue to buy hundreds of millions of X86 units every year, just at a slower pace because grandma can't stress out that quad like she could that old P4. Does that mean ARM is gonna disappear? Nope, it means its gonna have an insanely quick race to the bottom and several corps will go broke selling Android units, because by this time next year you'll have 7 inch dual core tablets with Android 5 selling for $50 at the Big Lots, and just like X86 people will find they can't tell the difference between a dual core and a quad so they'll get the cheaper unit. Look at the financials of the companies selling Android, Samsung is barely making a profit as is HTC, the rest are bleeding money.
But to say embedded is gonna take out X86 is as stupid as saying mopeds are gonna take out the trucking industry. They are completely different units built for completely different tasks and I have YET to see a single person, even one, replacing their X86 laptops and desktops for some cell phone chip. Sorry, ain't gonna happen.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.