AMD debuts 16-core Opteron chips to power the cloud

New server chips based on Bulldozer promise scalability and value

AMD has officially unveiled its next-generation Opteron chips, featuring up to 16 processor cores to meet the requirements of cloud computing and enterprise customers with highly virtualised datacentre environments, according to the firm.

Announced today, the new Opteron 6200 and 4200 series processors actually started shipping to hardware vendors in September, which means that server kit based on the new chips should be available immediately.

Codenamed Interlagos and Valencia respectively, the new chips are based on AMD's newest Bulldozer core design and represent the first ever 16-core x86 architecture, AMD said.

AMD is also aiming to appeal to customers looking to cut costs, claiming that the new Opterons can handle more workloads while consuming no more power than AMD's previous generation of server chips, and that the larger number of cores means that fewer servers are required to handle the same workload.

"Customers are looking at the cloud as an opportunity to change the way they do business, to drive more value and move quicker, and cloud is a key part of what we are doing with this launch," said John Fruehe, AMD marketing director for servers and workstations.

Fruehe also said that the new processors enable AMD to offer much greater value than an Intel-based server at a comparable price point.

"What most customers do is configure to a budget, and when you do that you get much more from AMD," he said, claiming that the cost of supporting each virtual machine in a datacentre is 72 to 77 per cent lower on AMD's new platform.

The Opteron 6200 is available in versions with eight, 12 or 16 cores at base frequencies up to 3.3GHz, and supports high-performance server designs with up to four sockets, enabling systems with as many as 64 processor cores.

"This fits into the same power and thermal range as our current 6100 series, allowing them to be integrated very quickly into products that are already on the market," said Fruehe.

AMD debuts 16-core Opteron chips to power the cloud

New server chips based on Bulldozer promise scalability and value

Meanwhile, the Opteron 4200 is available with six or eight cores and is touted as having the lowest power consumption per core of any x86 server processor, at 35W TDP for an eight-core model. These chips replace the existing 4100 series, and similarly support systems with one or two sockets, at clock speeds up to 3.3GHz.

Further power savings are possible through the support of 1.25v memory components, which cuts energy consumption by 16 per cent, according to AMD.

A key feature of the new chips for customers with large datacentre estates is the ability to set a TDP power cap that the processor will not exceed, which allows administrators to maximise server density by setting the power consumption in 1W increments in the Bios.

"This is a feature designed for some very large customers with huge datacentres who have been trying to figure out how to optimise around a particular power budget," Fruehe said.

In contrast, the 6200 and 4200 also support AMD's Turbo Core technology, which can boost performance by bumping up the clock speed by 300-500MHz across all cores, if required.

However, a new Max Turbo mode allows the clock speed to be boosted by 1GHz or more, if only half the cores are active.

Like AMD's Zambezi desktop chip, the Opteron 6200 and 4200 chips are built using a modular design, where each Bulldozer module consists of a pair of integer execution cores plus a shared floating point unit, reflecting the less common use of floating point instructions.

Fruehe said that this design allows AMD the flexibility to mix and match CPU cores, and hinted that future chips could see a combination of GPU and Bulldozer cores.

Volume pricing for the new Opteron models starts at $377 (£234) for the 1.6GHz Opteron 4256 EE model, up to $1,019 (£633) for the 2.6GHz 6282 SE model.