AMD announces the world’s first 8- and 12-core x86 processor for the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market. The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform comes with Direct Connect Architecture 2.0 which performs much better than their previous generation 6-core processors. The difference is claimed to be an 88% increase in integer performance and a 119% boost in floating point performance.
Its other major features include enhanced integrated memory controller supporting four channels of DDR3 memory for up to a 2.5x improvement in overall memory bandwidth.5. It comes as AMD 5600 Series chipset with I/O virtualization capability, Hyper Transport 3.0 technology and PCI Express 2.0. It provides a wide range of power and performance options with no settlement on the available feature sets. It also in cooperates new power management features including a C1E power state to conserve energy when idle, the Advanced Platform Management Link allowing APML-enabled platforms to be remotely monitored for power and cooling, and AMD Cool Speed technology, which automatically reduces p-states if a specified temperature limit is exceeded. It carries 33% more memory channels per processor than competitive 2P solutions.6 and 50% higher DIMM capacity compared to previous generations, with up to 12 per processor, increasing the available memory overall and improving virtualization, database and HPC applications. The new design does not include “4P tax”, since the same processors can be used in both 2P and 4P designs, and 4P-capable processors are now available at the same price as 2P-capable processors, bringing greatly improved value to the 4P space.
Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Divisions, AMD said, “As AMD has done before, we are again redefining the server market based on current customer requirements. The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform signals a new era of server value, significantly disrupts today’s server economics and provides the performance-per-watt, value and consistency customers demand for their real-world data centre workloads.”
Thus in a comparison between a best-performing 2P competitive platform versus a similar best-performing 4P AMD-based platform, customers can recognize up to double the performance and more than 10% lower total processor price.7. Leading OEMs including HP, Dell, Acer Group, Cray, and SGI are introducing new systems based on this highly scalable and reliable platform.
Tags: 2p, amd opteron, available memory, core processors, hpc applications, integer performance, management link, memory bandwidth, memory channels