AMD Lifts Curtain On Six-Core Istanbul Chips

Advanced Micro Devices continued its recent roll of hitting road map targets ahead of schedule, releasing its first six-core server processor Monday. AMD pledged last month to make six-core, 45-nanometer server chips, code-named Istanbul, available in June and made good on the promise on the first of the month.

AMD released five Istanbul chips Monday with clock speeds of up to 2.6GHz and power draws for all five at 75 watts. The new six-core lineup includes three parts in the Opteron 2000 series for two-socket servers and two in the Opteron 8000 series for four- and eight-socket systems. The new six-cores have 6 MB of total L3 cache, 512 KB of L2 cache per core, and L1 cache is distributed as 64 KB of data cache plus 64 KB of instruction cache, per core.

Prices for the new chips range from $455 to $2,649.

Istanbul delivers "up to 34 percent more performance-per-watt" than the previous generation of quad-core, 45nm Opteron parts, code-named Shanghai, according to AMD. That number was reached in a comparison of a pair of 2.6GHz, 45nm parts -- the new six-core Opteron 2435 and the quad-core Opteron 2382 -- on the SPECpower_ssj 2008 benchmark.

The new chips drop into Socket F, making them platform-compatible with hardware supporting previous generations of dual-core and quad-core Opteron processors. The memory architecture remains DDR2, in contrast to rival Intel's aggressive push to DDR3 with its new Nehalem products.

"DDR3 is a great technology. For 2010," said John Fruehe, director of business development for server/workstation products at AMD. Fruehe contended that price, power and latency issues with the current generation of DDR3 products made it more economically sensible to stick with DDR2 until the next generation of the technology emerges next year.

Istanbul is the first release in a series of processors featuring more than four cores planned by AMD. The next big milestone on the Opteron road map, a processor code-named Magny-Cours that comes in eight-core and 12-core flavors, is being sampled to partners and will be officially released in the first quarter of 2010, according to Pat Patla, general manager of AMD's server business unit.

AMD's accelerated release of Istanbul is regarded as a feather in the cap of a company that has suffered both financial and technology woes in recent years. Following several years of delayed launches and product setbacks, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker has taken dramatic steps in recent months to better keep pace with its much larger rival in the x86 microprocessor market, Intel.

AMD has, since the second quarter of 2008, released performance-leading graphics products and fully integrated its ATI graphics division into its product groups, shaken up its management team and spun off its manufacturing assets in a major corporate restructuring. It also has released its first 45nm Shanghai-class processors about a quarter ahead of schedule, produced better-than-anticipated desktop chips in its Phenom II lineup, and now has Istanbul in place about six months ahead of its original road map target.

Add in the record fine levied against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel by the European Union last month for anti-competitive practices, and AMD's recent string of good results would seem to make the company's aim to return to profitability after a depressing string of quarters in the red that much more likely to actually happen.

Still, even with Istanbul officially shipping, AMD did not beat Intel to six cores. The larger chip maker introduced its six-core, Penryn-class Dunnington processors in September -- though Intel has not yet shipped six-core chips based on its new Nehalem microarchitecture, which features next-generation technologies similar to those present in AMD's new Istanbul parts.

Intel has two, six-core Xeon parts -- the 2.66GHz, 130W X7460 with 16 MB of L3 cache and priced at $2,729; and the 2.4GHz, 90W E7450 with 12 MB of L3 cache and priced at $2,301.

The full Istanbul lineup, with pricing:

AMD Opteron Model 8435 (2.6GHz, 75W ACP): $2,649

AMD Opteron Model 8431 (2.4GHz, 75W ACP): $2,149

AMD Opteron Model 2435 (2.6GHz, 75W ACP): $989

AMD Opteron Model 2431 (2.4GHz, 75W ACP): $698

AMD Opteron Model 2427 (2.2GHz, 75W ACP): $455