AMD announces fast, energy-saving chip

Reuters
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices has started selling the new generation of its Opteron quad core processors for servers, AMD announced on Wednesday, nearly one year after Intel launched its own 45 nanometer chip.

After a troubled launch of its earlier Barcelona chip, AMD waited until the new chip, called "Shanghai," was actually in distribution to make its formal announcement.

The chip is called quad core because each core operates as an independent computing device on the same chip. The size historically refers to the smallest feature on a chip.

The Shanghai chip has high energy efficiency, AMD says. For example, it automatically turns off some parts of the chip when they are not in use, even for short periods of time, the company said.

The Shanghai is designed to work well with so-called virtualization, in which space is saved on servers by running separate "virtual" machines across drives, instead of requiring separate drives for each machine.

AMD said that two versions of the chip are available now, with enhanced versions available in early January.

IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Dell are among 25 systems vendors who will be shipping machines this quarter with the new chip on board, AMD said.

AMD quoted a Hewlett-Packard executive in praise of the new chip. Paul Gottsegen, vice president of marketing for Industry Standard Service, said HP had "experienced unparalleled success over the past four years working with AMD in bringing AMD Opteron processor-based platforms to customers."

The company said that the processors are easier to replace than Intel's. Intel says that is not true.

AMD said it is looking to increase market share with the server. The market intelligence firm iSuppli said it had only 12 percent in the third quarter.

(Reporting by David Lawksy, additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Gary Hill)

© Reuters 2008

From : http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/technology/story.html?id=4f703cd5-244d-4904-b550-cf71315c2a87&k=69978

AMD Delivers First 45nm Shanghai Chips Early

By Damon Poeter, ChannelWeb
9:21 AM EST Thu. Nov. 13, 2008
Advanced Micro Devices officially released its first 45-nanometer server chips Thursday, promising the new quad-core Opteron processors, code-named Shanghai, would deliver 30 percent to 35 percent increases in both performance and power efficiency over the previous Barcelona generation of products AMD introduced late last year.

AMD, which had originally planned to launch Shanghai early next year, was able to launch its next-generation Shanghai chips ahead of schedule thanks to an exceptionally smooth validation process that saved AMD a full "silicon spin," said Randy Allen, head of AMD's Computing Solutions Group.

Allen attributed part of the success in getting Shanghai out ahead of schedule to lessons learned from Barcelona, AMD's first quad-core product, which had a glitch at launch that caused about a quarter's delay in its volume ramp.

AMD's transition to the 45nm fabrication process comes about a year after larger rival Intel introduced its first 45nm processors for both servers and desktops, later transitioning its notebook chips to the new process as well. Intel made the leap from 65nm to 45nm by reinventing the metal gate in its transistors, but AMD, working with IBM, chose to pioneer new methods of immersion lithography to achieve its latest die shrink.

AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., Thursday unveiled the first nine Shanghai processors for two-, four- and eight-socket x86 servers in its Opteron stable. These include five Opteron 2000 series chips ranging in clock speed from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz and four Opteron 8000 series chips ranging from 2.4GHz to 2.7GHz. All nine quad-core chips are socket-compatible with the previous Barcelona generation and slot into the 75W thermal envelope.

AMD has priced its first Shanghai chips aggressively against the older Barcelona models. The 2.5GHz Opteron 2380, for example, is in the middle of the new Opteron 2000 series stack but costs just $8 more than the fastest Barcelona-class equivalent, the 2.3GHz Opteron 2356, which sells for $690. Similarly, the new 2.5GHz Opteron 8380 costs the same—$1,514—as the older 2.3GHz 8356.

Full product names and prices for the new Opteron 2000 series are: Opteron 2376 (2.3GHz, $377), Opteron 2378 (2.4GHz, $523), Opteron 2380 (2.5GHz, $698), Opteron 2382 (2.6GHz, $873), Opteron 2384 (2.7GHz, $989). The full list of new Opteron 8000 series chips is: Opteron 8378 (2.4GHz, $1,165), Opteron 8380 (2.5GHz, $1,514), Opteron 8382 (2.6GHz, $1,865), Opteron 8384 (2.7GHz, $2,149).

Low-power 55W and high-performance 105W versions of Shanghai are scheduled for release early next year, according to AMD. The chip maker has also confirmed the release of 45nm desktop chips, code-named Deneb, in the first-quarter 2009 timeframe, though some reports have the first Deneb processors hitting the market before the end of this year.

AMD partners such as John Lee, vice president of Advanced Technology Solutions at Milpitas, Calif.-based Appro International, believe Shanghai solidifies the chip maker's hold on the four-socket server space.

"The advantages of four-socket, utilizing the Direct Connect architecture, are huge. With HyperTransport, it makes migration very easy and affordable. Performance scales linearly," Lee said.

"We're very excited to launch general-purpose servers, commodity clusters and supercomputers on Shanghai. Customers are testing Shanghai systems now and they are seeing improved performance while consuming less power," he added.

Meanwhile, microprocessor market leader Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., has its own big product news coming up. The chip giant will officially launch the first three processors built with its new Nehalem micro-architecture early next week.

from : http://www.crn.com/hardware/212002312