AMD Emphasizes Energy Efficient Opterons

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This week's Server Den steps back from the systems side to take a look at one of the processors which powers it all. I'm talking about AMD's Opteron, which famously shook up the category when it launched in 2003 as the industry's first 32/64-bit architecture.

This week's Server Den steps back from the systems side to take a look at one of the processors which powers it all. I'm talking about AMD's Opteron, which famously shook up the category when it launched in 2003 as the industry's first 32/64-bit architecture. Opteron is even more notable for its groundbreaking jettisoning of the front-side bus in favor of direct connectivity between the CPU and memory and I/O.

I'm going to dive into my interview with Nigel Dessau [picture at right], AMD's chief marketing officer, soon, but first some background. The middle years of the last decade, when AMD was widely acknowledged to have achieved a lead in server processor performance, has since receded into a more traditional neck-in-neck battle. In 2009, Intel reset the bar with Nehalem. AMD parried with its new "Istanbul" Opterons.

Currently, AMD is attacking the server space on both the performance and energy efficiency fronts. At the high end, AMD is readying its Opteron 6100 series processor, aka Magny-Cours, which will come in eight- and 12-core versions. Power savings are spotlighted in the Opteron 4100 series, due this quarter. As I discussed in my recent interview with HP, reining in electricity costs may not be sexy, but it's the largest--and most easily addressed--item on the checklist for anyone buying servers, so this is a smart play on AMD's part.

It's good to see AMD moving forward as a continuing processor player. Its ongoing and healthy market presence might not have been predicted if one had been paying close attention to its challenged financial results over the past several years. However, the company put itself on a revived footing in 2009. That was accomplished by spinning off its chip manufacturing operation into a separate company called GlobalFoundries.

More here: informationweek.com