14 DAY TRIAL // Server vendor Hewlett-Packard has been reported to work on an AMD Opteron (Barcelona) version of their ProLiant DL585 server line. The decision has been made as AMD is already sampling the B3 version of their quad-core processor.
The B3 silicon fixes a notorious bug that occurs when the system is working at full load. Known as the TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) errata, the bug not only crippled both Phenom and Opteron products, but almost led the company to ruin. Early this week, AMD sent two units of the new Barcelona 2352 to Isohunt, a famous torrent website, involved in some copyright-infringement lawsuits.
At the moment, HP's Proliant DL585 G2 servers are powered by dual-core Opteron processors. However, the updated documentation on the company's website refers to the quad-core Opteron used in HP's High-Performance Technical Computing (HPTC) DL585 models.
"The second generation (G2) HP ProLiant DL585 server offers the performance and efficiency of quad-core AMD Opteron processors, enhanced by improvements to all major subsystems in the server." This is found in a paper entitled "HP ProLiant DL585 G2 server technology," reads a part of the published documentation.
Further technical specifications for this architecture also include dual-core AMD Opteron 8200 series or 8300-series quad-core chips, Nvidia nForce Professional 2200 and 2050 chipset, as well as the AMD 8132 chipset. Moreover, the motherboard offers 100MHz PCI-X slots, four PCI Express x4 slots, three PCI Express x8 slots, and two embedded multifunction Gigabit Ethernet network adapters with Integrated Lights Out (iLO) functionality.
The DL585 models are especially sold on the High-Performance Technical Computing market. HP states that the server is proficient in electronic design automation (EDA)/semiconductor, financial applications, petrochemical applications, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications, large database applications, and video rendering applications, and many other uses.
The quad-core version of the DL585 server needs a service pack upgrade for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 SP 3 or SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 10, that will allow the operating system to take advantage of the brand-new AMD PowerNow! technology.