Monday, March 29, 2010

AMD's 'Magny-Cours' Server Chip Aims at Volume Market

On Monday, Advanced Micro Devices announced Magny-Cours, the code-name for both 8- and 12-core processors which will be sold under the name Opteron 6100.

A second family, a 4- and 6-core chip, will be sold as part of the Opteron 4000 family, or the "Lisbon" code name.

Systems using the chip will be available from Cray, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard in the United States; Acer will also build servers around the new Opterons in Europe. HP will offer "broad-based support" for the new chip, according to John Fruehe, the director of marketing for server and workstation processors for AMD. Dell, meanwhile, will offer the chips as part of its Data Center Solutions (DCS) service, as well as in PowerEdge servers.

Although AMD announced the new processors on Monday, chips from the new line began shipping in February.

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361926,00.asp

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Intel Partners See 'Easy' Upgrade Path With Xeon 5600 Chips

One word to describe upgrade opportunities around Intel's new Xeon 5600 series of server and workstation processors? "Easy," said a number of Intel system builder partners following Tuesday's launch of the chip giant's Westmere-class series of quad-core and six-core Xeon chips.

"It's a complete drop in to the existing platforms, which is great," said Todd Swank, director of marketing at Burnsville, Minn.-based system builder Nor-Tech. "With just a BIOS upgrade needed, it makes it easy to upgrade our current Intel server offerings."

Swank, like many Intel partners in attendance at this week's Intel Solutions Summit (ISS) in Las Vegas, said a simple swap-out of last year's quad-core Xeon 5500 series chips for a new six-core Xeon 5600 series part would deliver "an automatic 30 percent increase in performance."

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.crn.com/white-box/223900139;jsessionid=CBV35XMXL4VTDQE1GHPCKH4ATMY32JVN

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Intel to Launch Eight-core Nehalem-EX This Month

Intel will release its fastest and highly anticipated eight-core Nehalem-EX server processor later this month, a company executive said late Thursday.

The processor will be targeted at four-socket servers, said Shannon Poulin, Xeon platform director at Intel. Each physical core will be able to run two threads simultaneously, giving the chip 64 virtual processing cores on servers.

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini has described Nehalem-EX as Intel's fastest processor to date. The chip maker announced the processor last year, and said it would release the chip in the first half of this year, but did not provide an exact release date.

Poulin declined to provide the clock speed of the chips. However, the company has said it will include 24MB of cache, and 2.3 billion transistors.

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/190906/intel_to_launch_eightcore_nehalemex_this_month.html

Thursday, March 4, 2010

IBM Previews New Server Architecture

IBM on Tuesday announced new System x and BladeCenter servers, which are based on a new server design that the company claims will boost application performance while reducing energy costs in data centers.

The EX5 servers take a step away from traditional x86 server architecture in which processors and memory are locked together. The new server architecture decouples memory from the processors into separate units, according to IBM.

That could help the memory and processor scale separately for faster application performance, while slashing down on storage and energy costs, the company said. IBM is previewing the servers at the CeBIT trade show being held in Hanover, Germany.

"All the new systems have improved energy efficiency in their designs across a wide range of components achieving substantial energy savings when compared to the current generation of similar servers," said Ronald Hagan, vice president of the System x business at IBM.

Read Full Article Here:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/190499/ibm_previews_new_server_architecture.html

CeBIT 2010 : Mission-critical features now in Nehalem-EX parts.

What Would You Do With 48 Cores?

Here’s a chance for US customers to let AMD know. In a blog post on blogs.amd.com/work, John Fruehe kicked March off with a great new contest. Customers can submit a short essay, submit a video or write a blog telling us what they would do with 48 cores to help change the world. The winner will be chosen by an esteemed group of AMD marketing professionals.

One winner will be selected and awarded with:

• Four new AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6174, 12-core (2.2 GHz)
• TYAN S8812 motherboard: the motherboard is a Tyan S8812 that features 4 processor sockets with the capacity for you to install up to 8 DIMMs per socket
• One copy of Windows Server® 2008

Approximate retail value of all prizes is $8,189 USD.

Spread the word: You can use the following custom URL to get the message out: http://links.amd.com/48corecontest