opteron

A big number doesn't always win over the market, but it can help. And the number AMD is pinning its hopes on today is 16.

That's the notable number of cores in each of its Opteron 6200 "Interlagos" processors using the new "Bulldozer" architecture. Using an approach that helped Intel reclaim the initiative that the original Opteron stole years ago, the Opteron 6200 actually packages two silicon chips in a single housing and fit into the same socket as the earlier-generation Opteron 6100 models that reached up to 12 cores.

The chips are available … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices today rolled out its new Opteron 6200 and 4200 processors in a bid to regain server market share and become a more relevant player.

The announcement comes amid a bevy of high-performance computing announcements this week at the SC11 conference in Seattle. For AMD, the new chips represent a part of the company’s focus on emerging markets, mobile and cloud computing. These Opterons, which include more cores, performance and efficiency, fall into AMD’s strategy to power cloud computing server farms.

As for the processors, AMD’s new chips, which were code-named “Interlagos” and “Valencia”, promise … Read more

The University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has contracted with Cray to provide the supercomputer for the National Science Foundation's Blue Waters project. That computer will tap AMD's new 16-core processor.

Blue Waters will be composed of more than 235 Cray XE6 cabinets based on the AMD's Opteron 6200 Series processor (formerly code-named "Interlagos") and more than 30 cabinets of a future version of the recently announced Cray XK6 supercomputer with Nvidia Tesla graphics processing units (GPUs), Cray said. All of this will be combined into a single, powerful hybrid supercomputer.

The … Read more

Updated at 11:10 a.m. PDT: adding Walmart dv2 laptop information.

Concerns about Advanced Micro Devices' future are being aired as the company celebrates a chip milestone.

The chipmaker said Wednesday that it has shipped 500 million x86 (Intel-compatible) processors since the company's founding in 1969. And to celebrate, AMD is giving away four Hewlett-Packard dv2 ultra-thin notebooks based on its low-power Athlon Neo X2 chip. But the laptop giveaway, ironically, underscores one of AMD's challenges.

Doug Freedman, analyst at Broadpoint AmTech, said in a research note earlier this week that the dv2 laptop has "failed … Read more

Processors for servers with a power-efficiency design center are nothing new.

The RLX Technologies and Transmeta tag-team were at the forefront of the blade form factor during the Internet boom. Transmeta supplied the low-power, code-morphed processors at the heart of RLX blades. Neither company is still in business.

There have been other examples. HP introduced a blade, the BL10e, that used the Pentium M mobile processor but targeted server workloads. In 2005, Intel took another shot with "Sossoman," an explicitly server-oriented chip based on the "Yonah" mobile core.

None of these took off in any big … Read more

Last week, I attended a press event in Los Angeles hosted by Hewlett-Packard's workstation business unit. Hewlett-Packard was preparing for this week's announcement of three new Z-series workstation models: the Z400, Z600, and Z800.

HP briefed the reporters and analysts with all the key details of the products (the speeds and feeds, as we say), took us to visit a couple of HP's key customers in the area, and hosted presentations by software partners and more customers.

The workstations are very nice, especially the Z600 and Z800: high-quality dual-processor systems based on Intel's newest Xeon 5500… Read more

Advanced Micro Devices will announce Wednesday that its first six-core processor in on track to launch later this year.

AMD's "Istanbul" processor will be targeted at server computers. With the release, AMD will be playing catch up to Intel, which began offering its six-core "Dunnington" processor for servers last fall. Intel's first Nehalem-architecture server processor is also due soon, which, on a per-core basis, is expected to offer better performance than Dunnington.

"The silicon is healthy and we're targeting a launch in 2H09," AMD spokesperson Jake Whitman said Tuesday.

"The … Read more

Intel and DreamWorks plan to show off the fruits of their 3D collaboration in a Super Bowl 3D extravaganza this Sunday as DreamWorks prepares to tap into future Intel Larrabee graphics silicon.

The Super Bowl ad sponsored by DreamWorks Animation, Intel, and NBC will feature a 3D trailer of the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens, coming out in March. A second spot will be a 3D commercial for PepsiCo's SoBe LifeWater energy drinks. Viewers--as they will in the movie theater--will need special 3D glasses to see the effects. (Intel has made 125 million of the InTru3D glasses, which are … Read more

Updated on January 26 at 9:50 a.m. PST with additional information about ACP and TDP thermal-envelope ratings.

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday released low-power and high-performance processors that will find their way into servers from Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, and Rackable Systems.

The new server processors are updated versions of AMD's 45-nanometer Shanghai processor.

"When we first came to market, we brought out the standard-power (Shanghai processors) because that's where the bulk of our market is," John Fruehe, the director of business development for server and workstation products at AMD, said in an interview. &… Read more