Dell upgrades PowerEdge servers with Opteron 6200

Rack and blade systems get a boost from 16-core server chips

Dell is the latest vendor to announce systems based on AMD's new 16-core server chip, the Opteron 6200 series, upgrading several of its PowerEdge lines to use the new parts.

Officially launched last week, AMD's Opteron 6200 series features up to 16 integer cores on each chip, but is socket compatible with the older Opteron 6100 line while fitting into the same power and thermal constraints.

This enables it to serve as a drop-in replacement for systems built for the Opteron 6100, and Dell is the latest vendor to take advantage of the fact.

Dell now offers the Opteron 6200 processors in its PowerEdge R715 and R815 rack servers, the PowerEdge M915 blade server and the ultra-dense PowerEdge C6145.

The PowerEdge C6145 is designed for high performance computing and scale-out datacentre infrastructure, and with the Opteron 6200 customers can configure it with up to 128 cores inside a single 2U rack-mount chassis.

The PowerEdge R715 and R815 are two-socket and four-socket rack-mount servers, respectively.

Meanwhile, the PowerEdge M915 is a four-socket blade system for Dell's PowerBlade chassis, enabling up to 64 cores per blade with the updated chip.

Speaking of the new systems, Dell vice president of server marketing Sally Stevens said that highly virtualised environments and scale-out workloads are changing the dynamics of the datacentre.

"Our customers want to be able to do more work in less space, and we're giving them that capability with a complete AMD-based server portfolio that allows them to effectively manage high volumes of system traffic while reducing workload costs," she said.