AMD goes for energy efficient quad-cores

Feb 13, 2007 16:05 GMT  ·  By

AMD was kind enough to disclose some interesting stuff regarding performance capabilities as related to the upcoming Barcelona CPU. It looks like customers will see dramatic improvements when comparing Barcelona CPUs to current dual-core Opteron processors or Intel quad-core Xeon 5300.

Brent Kirby, Opteron product manager, states that Barcelona will outpace a dual-core Opteron by between 60 to 80% at any given clock speed. Likewise, compared to Intel's fastest Xeon 5300, AMD promises that Barcelona will be about 40% faster in a series of applications.

Barcelona is already notorious for its low-power specification, being expected to come in the same packages as today's dual-core CPUs. Regular desktop quad-core CPU could still be running at a thermal design power of 95 watts, but the server-oriented "HE" versions will be rated at 68 watts. Since Barcelona is specially designed for the socket F server platform, companies will be able to simply replace current socket F dual-core Opterons with the new quad-core CPUs, without having to worry about design or heat issues. AMD claims that the typical TDP factor of its new CPUs will be about 15% lower than the current TDP provided with Intel's dual and quad-cores, which would make for power consumption of less than 58 watts in the case of a Barcelona CPU.

Amongst the new features integrated in Barcelona CPUs is a next-generation "PowerNow" technology, which can dynamically adjust the voltage and clock speed of each processor core. Additionally, the CPU is equipped with two separate power rails that enable Barcelona to reduce the frequency in the cores, while still keeping the included memory controller running at full speed. Moreover, the improved virtualization feature can provide a performance gain of up to 43% over non AMD-V driven applications.

Prices for the upcoming quad-cores should be similar to those covered by the first dual-core Opterons.