Intel, AMD Square Off With Nehalem And Shanghai

AMD on Nov. 13 unveiled the first nine Shanghai processors for two-, four- and eight-socket x86 servers in its Opteron stable. These include five Opteron 2000 series chips ranging in clock speed from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz and four Opteron 8000 series chips ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.7GHz.

All nine quad-core chips are socket compatible with the previous Barcelona generation and slot into the 75W thermal envelope. AMD is also set to introduce 55W and 105W versions of 45nm Opteron processors in the first-quarter timeframe, the company said.

Joe Toste, VP of marketing at Equus Computing, Minneapolis, Minn., thinks Intel and AMD have directly opposing problems of perception going forward with their new chips. Intel's Nehalem drops into a new socket and requires a platform refresh, which is why questions have been raised about whether the rest of the hardware ecosystem is going to be ready out of the gate. But there are no doubts, Toste said, that Intel will be able to deliver its own new products quickly and in volume.

AMD's Shanghai, on the other hand, is socket compatible with the previous Opteron generation, code-named Barcelona, that was released in September 2007. That means the ecosystem is already in place for AMD's delivery of its first 45nm chips. But as Toste points out, the smaller chip maker still suffers from the bad taste left in the channel by the sluggish ramp of Barcelona and a glitch on that chip that caused volume distribution to be delayed for about five months after Barcelona's September 2007 release date.

AMD will simply have to prove it is able to deliver its new parts, say market watchers. But the first reviews of Shanghai have been glowing. CRN's Test Center found that a pair of the new 2.7GHz Opteron 2384 processors outperformed a pair of Intel's Xeon E8450 chips while consuming less power.

And some system integrators, wary of AMD after a rough couple of years in its relationship with the channel, sound ready to give the chip maker a second chance.

"I like what they are doing with Opteron in terms of power consumption and virtualization. I have not been a big AMD fan, but I think I'll have to look at them again," said Mitch Miller, president of Dynamic Computer Solutions, Topeka, Kan.

Some of AMD's biggest advocates are builders of high-performance computer clusters, like John Lee, VP of Advanced Technology Solutions at Milpitas, Calif.-based Appro International. Lee believes Shanghai solidifies the chip maker's position in the four-socket server space.

"The advantages of four-socket, utilizing the Direct Connect architecture, are huge. With HyperTransport, it makes migration very easy and affordable. Performance scales linearly," Lee said.

"We're very excited to launch general-purpose servers, commodity clusters and supercomputers on Shanghai. Customers are testing Shanghai systems now and they are seeing improved performance while consuming less power."

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