AMD Upgrades Opteron, Touts Quad Core Milestone

The Socket F Opteron processors, which AMD had previously signaled would be launched during LinuxWorld in San Francisco this week, are the first for AMD to add virtualization acceleration and DDR2 memory. They will be available through distribution on August 15, according to AMD.

Rival Intel has been offering virtualization acceleration in some of its server chips since earlier this year and released new server chips based on its new, faster and more efficient Core Architecture last month. Those Xeon "Woodcrest" processors also include virtualization acceleration and jumps to a new memory technology called Fully Buffered DIMMs.

AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., has been touting the new server processors as sharing the same socket as its forthcoming quad-core processor. So customers that buy dual-core now will be able to upgrade many of their systems to quad-core by simply swapping out the CPU, said Brent Kerby, producer marketing manager for AMD's servers and workstations.

Intel plans to roll out its own quad-core processor later this year — taking two of its dual-core processors and packaging them together — but Kerby said AMD doesn't mind being second to market with its product since the chip maker believes its native quad-core design will offer customers better performance.

"We wanted to have native quad-core out of the gate," he said. "We don't have any of the burdens of going to a multi-chip module."

Kerby noted quad-core really needs to be manufactured using a 65 nanometer process. Intel has already moved to 65 nanometers — giving the company the ability to produce more volume of smaller chips — while AMD is still in the process of transitioning from 90 nanometer to 65 nanometer.

AMD recently completed the design, or "tape out" of the quad-core processor, Kerby said. That means AMD believes it has finalized the design of the quad-core processor and can now proceed to its testing phase, an important step in delivering the product on schedule, he said.

Tau Leng, director of marketing at SuperMicro, said AMD's new processors offer an easy migration path for customers. The new Socket F motherboards and their accompanying chipsets will be able to accept an AMD quad-core processor. Intel currently isn't offering motherboards for its Xeon "Woodcrest" processors that can be upgraded to its quad-core module, he said, but SuperMicro expects eventually to get a chipset upgrade that will rectify that. David Valencia, vice president of sales and marketing at system builder Pogo Linux, also sees value in the upgradeability option of AMD's new chip. "We see [Socket F] as a bridge product to get us to quad-core," he said.

Sun Microsystems, which uses AMD exclusively in its x86 products, already has built in thermal and power capabilities necessary to support quad-core in its new rack server, said Pradeep Parmar, Sun's product line business manager.

As reported previously by CRN, sun plans to roll out a blade server where customers would get upgraded automatically to new processor technology as it comes out. Parmar said Sun will be detailing the program more in the fall and that channel partners can get certified to do the upgrade work for their customers. "We believe this saves customers 20 percent in overall operating costs," said Parmar.

Sun plans to refresh its entire x86 product line with the new processors over time, but is also announced three new servers that immediately use the Socket F processor.

One is a single-socket 1u server that is priced at less than $1,000 and includes Sun's N1 system manager. Sun also is releasing a 2u server with 16 DIMM slots, which is more than is available in most competing systems, according to Parmar. Solution providers can order these servers with up to 64 Gbytes of memory, said Parmar. Finally, Sun is also offering a single-socket workstation aimed at software developers priced at less than $1,000. It includes preloaded software with a value of about $5,000, Parmar said.

AMD is releasing the new processors at a time when its support among system makers has never been higher. In addition to Sun's new products, IBM earlier this month said it is expanding its server line with new offerings from AMD. IBM previously had a small sampling of servers using AMD Opteron processors.

Others supporting the new chips include AMAX, SuperMicro and Hewlett-Packard.

AMD is releasing a variety of models for one- to eight-socket systems. The processors are priced from $255 on the low end to $2,649 on the high end in quantities of 1,000.

AMD's actual launch comes a few weeks later than expected, according to several systems builders. AMD had widely broadcast a launch date of Aug. 1 to many of its customers. Kerby said AMD's wasn't having any technical problems with its servers chips. AMD was simply waiting for all of its partners to signal they were ready with product.