AMD Pins Hopes On Hardcastle

AMD Business Class also offers a variety of configurations for system builders, Speed said. Commercial-class processors available to AMD's channel include Phenom triple-cores and quad-cores, as well as Athlon single-cores and dual-cores, all signified by the "B" designation on their model numbers. These include the 2.3GHz Phenom X4 9600B (quad-core, 95W, 2MB of L2 cache, 2MB of L3 cache), the 2.3GHz Phenom X3 8600B (triple-core, 95W, 1.5MB of L2 cache, 2MB of L3 cache), and five Athlon devices ranging from the 2.7GHz, single-core Athlon 1640B (45W, 512K of L2 cache) up to the 2.8GHz, dual-core Athlon X2 5400B (65W, 1MB of L2 cache).

AMD commercial systems can be built on AMD's newly released 780V chipset with integrated graphics but system builders also have the option of selecting AMD Validated Solutions-tested boards that feature the Nvidia MCP78 chipset, Speed said. The 780V chipset, the commercial version of AMD's well-received 780G chipset, features DirectX 10 graphics, ATI PowerPlay technology for energy efficiency and ATI SurroundView support for up to four monitors.

System builders have the option of adding discrete ATI graphics to their AMD Business Class systems and the 780V chipset supports AMD's hybrid graphics technology as well, Speed said. Boards immediately available to the channel include two from Asus, the M3A78-CM DVI (AMD 780V chipset, ATI Radeon 3100) and the M3N78-CM DVI (Nvidia MCP78 chipset, Nforce 750a); two from MSI, the K9A2VM-FD (AMD 780V chipset, ATI Radeon 3100) and the K9N2GM-FD (Nvidia MCP78 chipset, Nforce 750a); and one from ECS, the A780VM-M2 (AMD 780V chipset, ATI Radeon 3100).

All five Hardcastle boards are TPM 1.2-capable and ROHS-compliant, with 4 DIMM slots, 6-channel audio and 1GB LAN capacity. Premier AMD partners in North America and Western Europe will be able to receive exchanged boards from AMD in advance and by the next business day after notification of an exchange request, Speed added.

AMD promises up to 24 months of stability and has a new three-year warranty for parts sold through select distributors or in systems available from select OEMs. The chip maker is also stressing the specific advantages of its new commercial platforms, such as readiness for Windows Vista migration, while offering its system builder channel a "full array of marketing art, materials and tools" for point-of-sale, print and Web, Speed said.

AMD also expects to develop more out-of-band system management capabilities on its commercial client systems in the coming year, Speed said. AMD is generally thought to have fallen behind Santa Clara, Calif.-based rival Intel on out-of-band system management, an increasingly important component of commercial systems and networking management, particularly for channel-based managed service providers.

Intel, with its proprietary vPro technology for system management and security, has built solid partnerships with MSP platform vendors like Level Platforms and N-able Technologies, as well as system, security and process management software vendors like LANDesk and networking infrastructure companies like Cisco. But rather than build proprietary technology of its own, AMD has focused its efforts on developing open standards for in-band and out-of-band manageability with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) computing standards body.

AMD, in collaboration with the DMTF, software vendors like Microsoft and LANDesk, and communications hardware and firmware manufacturers like Broadcom, Marvell and Avocent, is working towards open standards for system and networking manageability, Speed said. Standards for Desktop and Mobile Architecture for System Hardware, or DASH, have been defined and DASH-standard silicon, firmware, and testing/development tools are slated for release this year, with limited deployment of management consoles expected in 2009 and mainstream deployment of standard features for PCs and consoles roadmapped for 2010.