AMD Sets New Standard for Price, Performance, for Datacenter

AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform with Direct Connect Architecture 2.0 delivers more cores, more memory for less money1

Up to 119 percent improved performance while maintaining low price and power2

AMD (NYSE: AMD) announces availability of a new server platform featuring the world’s first 8- and 12-core x86 processor for the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market. The AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform addresses the unmistakable needs of server customers today - workload-specific performance, power efficiency, and overall value - while delivering more cores and more memory for less money.3   Leading OEMs including HP, Dell, Acer Group, Cray, and SGI are introducing new systems based on this highly scalable and reliable platform.

 

“As AMD has done before, we are again redefining the server market based on current customer requirements.  The AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform signals a new era of server value, significantly disrupts today’s server economics and provides the performance-per-watt, value and consistency customers demand for their real-world data center workloads.” said Ravi Swaminathan, Managing Director and Regional Vice President of Sales and Marketing for AMD India.

The new AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series platform features include:

• The industry’s only 8- and 12-core server processors performing at up to two times the level of AMD’s previous generation 6-core processors, including an 88 percent increase in integer performance4 and a 119 percent increase in floating point performance2.
• Enhanced integrated memory controller supporting four channels of DDR3 memory for up to a 2.5x improvement in overall memory bandwidth.5
• Thirty-three percent more memory channels per processor than competitive 2P solutions.6
• 50% higher DIMM capacity compared to previous generations, with up to 12 per processor, increasing the available memory overall and improving virtualization, database and HPC applications.
• AMD 5600 Series chipset with I/O virtualization capability, HyperTransport™ 3.0 technology and PCI Express® 2.0.
• Removal of the “4P tax”, since the same processors can be used in both 2P and 4P designs, and 4P-capable processors are now the same price as 2P-capable processors, bringing greatly improved value to the 4P space.
• Unprecedented price/performance. In a comparison between a best-performing 2P competitive platform versus a similar best-performing 4P AMD-based platform, customers can recognize up to double the performance and more than 10% lower total processor price.7
• Significant new power management features including a C1E power state to conserve energy when idle, the Advanced Platform Management Link allowing APML-enabled platforms to be remotely monitored for power and cooling, and AMD CoolSpeed technology, which automatically reduces p-states if a specified temperature limit is exceeded.
• A wide range of power and performance options with no compromise on the available feature sets.
• A legacy of consistency and stability.  The new AMD Opteron™ platform is chipset- and socket- compatible between 2P and 4P and will be compatible with the planned processors based on the next-generation AMD server processor core, code-named “Bulldozer”.

Partner Quotes –

“Acer’s server products are designed to fulfill our customers’ specific needs and empower them to achieve more. The new range of server systems is based on the highly scalable and reliable AMD Opteron™ 6000 series platform, built to deliver peak system performance combined with energy efficiency and genuine scalability – ideal for the SMB and high performance computing markets across the gamut of Labs, Education, R&D, Government & tech-intensive industries.” - Mr. S Rajendran, CMO, Acer India Pvt Ltd.

“HP is setting a new standard in server technology with next-generation HP ProLiant G7 servers that completely transform the economics of server-based computing,” said Som Satsangi, Director Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP India.  “ With the AMD Opteron™ 6000 series platform, our customers are realizing unparalleled workload-specific performance, power efficiency, and overall value."

“We believe that collaboration between hardware and software companies is a crucial step towards empowering customers with improved IT capabilities. Microsoft and AMD have a history of collaborating towards delivering groundbreaking solutions that continue to enable new computing possibilities in enterprise scenarios. Today, we applaud AMD on launching the all new and powerful AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series Platform and look forward to working together to uncover new opportunities and expand our business in the datacenter space”, said Pallavi Kathuria, Director, Server Business Group, Microsoft India.

"VMware and AMD have forged a best-in-class relationship, complementing our strengths in hardware and software, aimed at delivering robust solutions to support our customers' business needs. Our virtualization solutions on AMD's platform can deliver significantly improved performance, reduce power consumption, increase utilization, and enhance security for business critical resources. I look forward to the AMD Opteron™ 6000 Series Platform launch in the Indian market which will help enable us in accelerating our customers' journey towards virtualization and cloud computing" - Ganesan Arumugam, Director- Partners, VMware India said,

About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and technology partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visithttp://www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, and AMD Opteron are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SPEC, SPECint, and SPECfp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. For the latest SPECfp®_rate2006 and SPECint®_rate2006 results, visit http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/results/.

1. Based on comparison of median 1KU prices for complete AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor family ($744) vs. median of published 1KU prices for complete Intel Xeon 5600 Series processor family (“Westmere”) as of 3/23/10 ($996). Seehttp://files.shareholder.com/downloads/INTC/874746611x0x357729/DEEBEE81-C386-4EB8-8D9D-F0EA06C57797/Mar_14_10_1ku_Price.pdf for details.
2. Based on comparison of Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2435 (75W ACP; 2.6 GHz; $989 1KU price) vs. AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 (80W ACP; 2.2 GHz; $1165 planned 1KU price at launch) running SPECfp®_rate2006. Configuration: Supermicro A+ Server 1021M-UR+B server, 32GB (8x4GB DDR2-800) memory, Red Hat Enterprise Linux® Server release 5.3 64-bit; HP ProLiant DL165 G7 server, 64GB (16 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory, Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 5 Update 4. The results for AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 are based upon data submitted to Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation as of March 17, 2010.
3. “More cores”: up to 12 cores for AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor vs. up to 6 cores for Intel Xeon “Westmere”. “More memory”: Up to 24 DIMMs with up to 256GB of main memory for AMD (2P) vs. up to 18 DIMM slots with up to 144 GB of main memory for Intel (2P).  “Less money”: see footnote 1 above.
4. Based on comparison of Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor Model 2435 (75W ACP; 2.6 GHz; $989 1KU price) vs. AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 (80W ACP; 2.2 GHz; $1165 planned 1KU price at launch) running SPECint®_rate2006. Configuration: Supermicro A+ Server 1021M-UR+B server, 32GB (8x4GB DDR2-800) memory, Red Hat Enterprise Linux® Server release 5.3 64-bit; HP ProLiant DL165 G7 server, 64GB (16 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory, Red Hat Enterprise Linux® 5 Update 4. The results for AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 are based upon data submitted to Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation as of March 17, 2010.
5. STREAM memory bandwidth of 21GB/s for Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processor-based system vs. 55GB/s for AMD Opteron 6100 processor-based system. Configuration: 2 x Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors Model 2435 in Supermicro H8DMU+ motherboard, 16GB (8 x 2GB DDR2-800) memory, SuSE Linux® Enterprise Server 10 SP2 64-bit; 2 x AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6174 in “Dinar” reference design kit, 32GB (8 x 4GB DDR3-1333) memory, SuSE Linux® Enterprise Server 11 64-bit.
6. Based on comparison of 4 memory channels for AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor vs. 3 memory channels for Intel Xeon processor codenamed “Westmere.”  See http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3733
7. Based on SPECfp®_rate2006 results published on www.amd.com/opteronperformance as of March 29, 2010. The other results stated above reflect results published on _http://www.spec.org/cput2006/results as of March 17, 2010. 514 (est.) using 4 x AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6136 ($744 each) vs. 257 using 2 x Intel Xeon processor Model X5680 ($1633 each). The comparison presented above is based on the best performing four-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6174 and the best performing two-socket servers using Intel Xeon processor Models X5680. Pricing reflects 1KU tray pricing on www.amd.com and www.intel.com as of March 23, 2010.