4 The Hard Way

Advanced Micro Devices launched its first quad-core microprocessor Sept. 10 at Lucasfilm's Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco. Along with an armed guard of Stormtroopers and a wandering Wookie, some 50 OEMs were in attendance or had filmed tributes to the long-awaited release of the chip, codenamed Barcelona, that AMD calls the "world's most advanced x86 processor ever designed and manufactured."

That's a sharp contrast to the launch of the first Opteron back in 2003, when just one OEM, IBM, stood next to AMD on the stage. It took some time to get others on board, but eventually Opteron started taking a bite out of Intel's near- total x86 market share, particularly after AMD changed the server chip game with its dual-core products in 2005.

With quad-core Opteron processors now in the hands of AMD's OEM partners and system builder channel, the question is: Can AMD do it again? Can a company that has posted operating losses for three straight quarters muscle its way back into the server chip market and take back the technological edge lost to Intel in recent months? How quickly and to what extent will OEMs and system builders buy into AMD's "native quad-core" narrative, which argues that independent core architecture and energy savings trump faster clock speeds on Intel's current quad-core Xeon server chips? And at what price?

OEMs and system builders that received samples a week or two ahead of Barcelona's launch say they aren't ready to issue benchmarks just yet. AMD claims its two-way and eight-way quad-core x86 chips, which range in speed from 1.7GHz to 2.0GHz, outperform their equivalent 3.0GHz dual-core cousins by up to 55 percent. The vendor also promises a 2.5GHz quad-core Opteron model, the 2360 SE, by December.

Meanwhile, partners say three key advances are testing out as advertised—a tri-level memory cache hierarchy with fully shared L3 cache for all four cores, a floating point unit with 2x128-bit loads/cycle, and independent power supplies for each of the processor's four cores and to the memory controller. The last feature distinguishes AMD's quad-core product from Intel's, in that it's possible to idle one, two or three CPU cores for a workload to better manage power consumption.

As far as pricing, AMD's initial offering of 1,000-unit tray quantities of the nine processors in the quad-core Opteron family ranged from $209 for the two-way 2344 HE (1.7GHz, 55W) to $1,019 for the eight-way 8350 (2.0GHz, 75W). By comparison, Intel's low-end quad-core x86, the Xeon E5310, clocks at 1.6GHz, consumes 80W and was priced at about $230 at press time. Of course, Intel's newest quad-core Xeons, the 7300—or Tigerton series—max out with the X7350 at 2.93GHz and 130W, priced at a whopping $2,301 at volume.

How those prices will stand in a month or two is a matter of speculation, and the market has seen any number of price wars between Intel and AMD before. AMD executives and partners in the know say Barcelona will continue to be competitively priced. Market watchers say it will have to be, given Intel's recent slashing of its own quad-core prices down to levels nearly in line with its Core 2 Duo products.

Beyond the technological or even economic appeal of Barcelona, OEMs and channel partners are just as excited about the prospect of AMD finally challenging market leader Intel with something new again. Intel launched its quad-core Kentsfield desktop and Clovertown server and workstation chips on Dec. 13, 2006. For system builders, from the tier-one giants down to the smallest custom shops, AMD's nearly yearlong absence from the quad-core game has been an uncomfortable stretch, with options for building next-generation systems increasingly reduced to Intel or nothing.

"I don't want to paint Intel as the evil empire, but like with Microsoft, monopolies aren't good for us, and it's nice to see another player on the field. With Barcelona, AMD's showing that they're willing to give Intel a run for their money," said Bill Paschick, president of Rain Recording, a custom-system builder specializing in digital audio workstations, notebooks and storage devices.

Next: Ramping Up, Rolling Out