Advanced Micro Devices Incorporated
(AMD) has released its brand-new,
quad-core Opteron microprocessor,
code-named Barcelona.
According to analysts, the new
microprocessor from AMD – based in
Sunnyvale, California, the United
States – is crucial in the company’s
competition against Intel Corporation
in providing calculating engines for
the mid-size machines that run
websites and other key business
programs.
Intel had ruled the microprocessor
market until April 2003, when AMD
launched a chip called Opteron that
steadily gained market share until
Intel
counterattacked in mid-2006 with
faster products.
However, the stiffer competition and
certain lapses in execution stalled
AMD’s advances, leading to a
$600-million net loss in the second
quarter.
Barcelona, to be formally called the
Quad-Core AMD Opteron Processor, is
seen as important not only for AMD’s
turnaround but also for server makers
who want to vend chips off each other
to get lower prices and higher
performance.
Analysts say that AMD has managed to
squeeze four electronic brains on one
piece of silicon. Intel, by contrast,
packages two dual-processor chips
together.
In theory, the Barcelona design
improves communication between
processors. Earlier dual-processor
Opterons already had advantages in
fetching data from memory chips, and
the new model has improved circuitry
for complex chores called
floating-point calculations.
But the chip Barcelona, which arrived
later than the company had hoped,
operates at a maximum frequency of 2.0
gigahertz, which is slower than
initial expectations.
Though AMD executives promise to add
faster models quickly, Intel’s Xeon
chips now have advantages in running
the most widely used business
programs, according to Tom Kilroy, an
Intel vice-president who jointly runs
the company’s digital enterprise
division.
Barcelona, launched on September 10,
2007, in San Francisco, already has
customers. Server makers expected to
add Barcelona-based models include
International Business Machines
Corporation, Hewlett-Packard Company,
Dell Incorporated, and Sun Microsytems
Incorporated.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center,
affiliated with the University of
Texas in Austin, plans to install a
massive cluster of 3,936 Sun servers –
each with four Barcelona chips, giving
the supercomputer 62,976 processors in
all, Tommy Minyard, assistant director
of the center, said.
One of Barcelona’s attractions is low
power consumption, a key factor in
many computer rooms. Barcelona, which
has a series of power-saving features,
uses an older, more power-efficient
style of memory chips than Intel’s
Xeon.
As part of the launch of Barcelona,
AMD is adopting a scheme to measure
the average power consumption of its
chips, in addition to providing
numbers about the maximum power they
draw. The new approach, which is
closer to the way Intel rates its
chips, is designed to help customers
compare the two companies’ products,
according to Randy Allen, AMD’s
corporate vice-president and general
manager of its server and workstation
division.
When AMD’s Opteron entered the market,
Intel was selling Xeon models for
$3,692 each. Now, the fastest model of
its four-processor Xeon line lists for
$2,301, a 38% reduction.
Analysts estimate that the average
selling price for both AMD and Intel
server chips is now between $300 and
$400, compared with more than $500
when the Opteron was introduced.
