|
|
|
|
|
AMD's Quad CoreAvailable in 2007 |
By Alexandru Sima, Hardware Editor
8th of September 2006, 11:09 GMT
Adjust text size:  
|
| |
AMD show-cased its stability at the recent Dresden press conference. The company enforced its policy of sticking to the same core and also promised to be only one step behind Intel in offering quad-core technology.
According to the latest road-map for servers and workstations, it will be introducing quad-core technology in 2007 (the second quarter, opposed to Intel which is due to offer quad-core in the first one).
The technical director, Dan Goldsmith, told journalists: "The AMD Opteron processor road-map for servers features just one AMD64 core over a six year period, which means we don't have to make costly decisions choosing between different architectures. The road-map also outlines improvements in the chipset and platform support areas." However, Richard Baker, European channel marketing manager with AMD, tried to point out that the company's
acquisition of ATI wasn't going to affect AMD's support for other manufacturers' offerings. "The company wasn't going to 'hoist' the use of ATI graphic chips onto its channel partners", Baker said. He claimed, however, that AMD offers the best platform support for Windows Vista.
Further presentations revealed the intentions to go big on the power management facility, which is called PowerNow! This will enable the processor to operate in five power states (Intel has only three), and fall back down to 32 watts as opposed to 95 watts when running at optimum speed.
Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture add significant new features on top of the same technologies that helped establish AMD's industry leadership in performance-per-watt for 1P-8P x86 servers and workstations.
Here are some of AMD's definitions:
Quad-Core Upgradeability: Designed to enable an easy platform transition from DDR2 compatible Dual-Core to Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors in 2007, for improved application performance without infrastructure related power or cooling changes.
AMD Virtualization (AMD-V): Hardware-assisted technology helps enable higher levels of efficiency and utilization by allowing the division of one computer into several virtual machines.
Enhanced Performance-Per-Watt: AMD PowerNow! technology combined with energy-efficient DDR2 memory sets a new standard in performance-per-watt computing. Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors will integrate into the same DDR2-based platforms at the same power efficiency with increased performance-per-watt capabilities.
DDR2 Memory: Low-power, high-performance memory enables higher bandwidths at reduced operational cost, compared to DDR1 and FBDIMM memory.
And here are the current features, and the predicted developments for the next 2 years:
Processor (2006): Dual-Core, AMD Virtualization, Security, Memory RAS, DDR2;
Processor (2007): Next-Generation Quad-Core, L3 Cache, Power Management Enhancements, 128 bit FPU, Increased IPC;
Processor (2008): Direct Connect Architecture 2.0, Larger Cache, Probe Filter Manageability, Virtual I/O.
Chipset and Platform (2006): PCI Express, Gigabit Ethernet, TCP Offload, Serial SCSI, Serial ATA II, Hardware RAID;
Chipset and Platform (2007): PCI Express, Gigabit Ethernet, TCP Offload, Serial SCSI, Serial ATA II, Hardware RAID;
Chipset and Platform (2008): I/O Virtualization, PCI Express 2, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, TCP Offload, Serial SCSI, Serial ATA II, Hardware RAID.
|
|
| Rating: |
|
Good (3.2/5) |
8 vote(s) so far |
|
|
|
|
User opinions: |
 No user comments yet.  Be the first to express your opinion using the form below! |
|
|
