Supplied by AMD, a photo of the comapny's new six-core Opteron chip.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In an explicit effort to broaden its range of offerings for Web hosting companies, computer hardware manufacturer AMD (www.amd.com) announced this week that it has introduced a six-core Opteron microprocessor that operates at 40W.
The low power chip is designed to operate in dense computing environments – AMD cited cloud computing implementations in one report – and can cut power costs associated with running servers and other related functions, like air conditionings.
The new Opteron EE processor is the company’s most efficient six-core chip, and is based on the company’s Istanbul microarchitecture. Designed to be “drop-in” compatible with existing systems already running previous-generation quad-core chips, the new processor would reportedly produce a performance-per-watt increase of up to 31 percent.
“Based on close collaboration with our customers, we believe there is a clear value shift changing the economics of the server market,” said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager for server and workstation business at AMD, quoted in the press release introducing the product. “The new sixcCore AMD Opteron processor meets the increasing need for a combination of low total cost of ownership, superior performance-per-watt and scalability.”
Reports place the product in competition with the 7400 series Xeon processors from market-leader Intel, which launched its first six-core processors last year. Intel has said it intends to launch an eight-core Nehalem chip in the first quarter of 2010.
Energy efficiency is obviously a major consideration in the hosting – and consequently cloud computing – business, where power and cooling design is one of the key design considerations.
AMD’s website includes a link to a PDF of presentation slides describing the chip. The company also has a YouTube channel that offers video infomration on the chip.
