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Forget that six-core Gulftown Core i7. There’s a new Intel Xeon chip on the way with a whopping eight cores of processing goodness. Surely you can utilize eight cores in your home system, right? Well, maybe not, but the Nehalem-EX chip is likely to spice things up in the server sector when it launches later this month.
The Nehalem-EX will be a Xeon part built on Intel’s 45nm process technology. The chip will have hyperthreading, meaning up to 16 threads per processor. Clock speed is currently unknown. Being a server part, scalability is important and the Nehalem-EX won’t disappoint here. Thanks to the 4QPI links per chip, the new part will be scalable to eight sockets. So that’s 64 physical cores, or 128 threads. We’re pretty sure the benefits for Crysis 2 drop off around 48 cores or so.
Intel is promising big performance gains over the previous generation of Xeons, with nine times the memory bandwidth of the old chips. The part seems aimed at holding back AMD’s Magny-Cours six-core server parts due out soon. One way or another, servers are about to get a lot faster.
It’s a pretty good question, and we really don’t have a ton of ideas. There might not be a lot of real world use cases for a 48-core setup, but maybe you could come up with a few if the price was right. Like for instance, if AMD would give you those 48 cores if you came up with a good one. Well, that’s just what they’re doing.
AMD wants people to submit essays, videos, or blog posts explaining how they’d use a monster 48 core server to “make the world a better, more interesting place”. The contest is seemingly meant to promote the upcoming Magny-Cours based Opteron CPUs AMD will be releasing this quarter. If you can come up with the best idea, AMD will provide you with four new AMD Opteron 6174 12-core CPUs, a TYAN S8812 motherboard, and a copy of Windows Server 2008.
So what’ll it be? Super powered Folding@home box to cure cancer? Rendering farm for underprivileged, inner-city video producers? Check out the full rules here before you formulate any plans. Anyone planning on submitting an entry? Drop us a line if you win…
Wasting very little time, Gigabyte today announced what it claims is the first AMD 6-core CPU-ready motherboard, the socket AM3 GA-890GPA-UD3H.
This is the first board to feature AMD’s 890GX chipset paried with the new SB850 southbridge, resulting in native support for SATA 6Gbps, up to six devices in all. The southbridge also allows for SATA 6Gbps RAID support, another industry first according to Gigabyte.
"Giving users power over their high definition content is really at the heart of what the GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H is all about," commented Tim Handley, Deputy Director of Motherboard Marketing at GIGABYTE Technology Co. Ltd. "Not only does the GA-890GPA-UD3H deliver the industry’s highest performing integrated graphics solution with flawless HD video playback, but enabling SATA 6 Gbps with RAID functionality, USB 3.0 support and GIGABYTE 3x Power Boost means that users are able to spend less time waiting for their content to transfer, and more time to actually enjoy it."
Other features include USB 3.0 support, integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics with 128MB DDR3 sideport memory, two PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphics slots, dual-channel DDR3-1866+ support, 3X USB power delivery, HDMI, and a few other odds and ends.
No word yet on price or availability.
Image Credit: Gigabyte
Sure, you could buy that boring old Core i7. You could be like all those other sheep that shop for “released” and “fully tested” parts from Newegg. Or if you’re just the right mix of bold and rich, you can try buying a leaked 12-core AMD CPU from Ebay. The Opteron server chip is code-named Magny-Cours, and a set of four can be had for the low price of $7,700. The unreleased chip runs at 2.2GHz.
If you aren’t the do-it-yourself type, the same seller has a deal for you as well. They are selling a four socket server running the Magny-Cours processors. The server also packs 64GB of RAM. The going price is $20,000, but with 48 processing cores, that’s only about $416 per core. It’s not that unreasonable.
The Magny-Cours architecture doubles the core count on AMD’s current Istanbul Opteron chip. Power optimization was apparently paramount for AMD as the Magny-Cours is expected to use no more power than the Istanbul chips. We’re not going to encourage the purchase of these chips, but if you by them drop us a line, okay?
Intel isn’t the only one planning on beefing up its more budget-friendly lineup in Q2. Around the same time frame as Intel comes out with its third Core i3 chip (550), AMD will add another Propus-based processor to its family, the Athlon II X4 640.
This will be the first Propus-based CPU to reach 3GHz, while all other specs remain unchanged. In other words, 2MB of total cache, no L3 cache, DDR3 1333 memory support, and AM3 socket support.
Sometime around the middle of Q3, AMD will release yet another Propus-based chip, the Athlon II X4 645. This one will ship at 3.1GHz and will stay as the fastest-clocked Propus processor throughout the rest of 2010.
No word yet on price for either chip.
Image Credit: AMD via arxvaldex.com
AMD plans on shaking up its marketing strategy starting with its next round of business-oriented processors. Whereas previous iterations have fallen under the company’s B series (‘B’ for Business, of course), AMD will stick solely with its Phenom nomenclature, at least for its upcoming 3.2GHz business chip.
The Phenom II X4 97, as it will be called, will also come with 8MB of cache and a 95W TDP. This will replace the 3.0GHz Phenom II X4 B95 and rank as the fastest-running business processor in AMD’s lineup.
Expect the Phenom II X4 94 to debut sometime in early Q2 2010, Fudzilla reports. No word yet on price.
Image Credit: AMD
Several chip makers are expected to talk up current and upcoming processor designs at this year’s International Solid State Circuits Conferences, but it’s Intel’s 48-core chip that might steal the show.
Not a whole lot is known about this mega-chip just yet, other than it’s an experimental 48-core processor called the Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCCC). We also know that each core is a full x86 implementation that can run its own OS instance, but other than that, we’ll have to wait for more details.
AMD will also be on hand to discuss an upcoming 32nm mobile processor, which could possibly end up being the company’s first "Fusion" processor, currently codenamed Llano. Or it could be AMD’s Bobcart architecture revealed last last year. Either way, AMD says the chip it plans to show off will be a 32nm implementation of an AMD x86-64 core with more than 35 million transistors (not counting L2 cache). It will run at frequencies above 3GHz and sport several power improvements.
More details here
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Image Credit: Intel
AMD has had enough of sitting on the sidelines, at least when it comes to GPUs in the mainstream server market. So come 2012, the No. 2 chip maker says it plans to put a bigger focus on integrating graphics processor cores into this market segment.
The idea of combining graphics processors and CPUs in servers is one that’s going to catch on in a big way, believes Gina Longoria, director of the product management and workstation division at AMD. According to Longoria, the company could end up providing CPUs and GPUs together in a server to run highly parallel applications.
"As GPU becomes more relevant, that’s a better way of getting performance than [CPU] cores," Longoria said.
Even with this recognition and goal to push CPU-GPU use in mainstream servers, at least one analyst thinks AMD could be doing more.
"I’m glad they are addressing the market, but perhaps they should push ahead and develop the market more," said Dan Olds, principal analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. " Olds went on to point out how Nvidia aggressively pushes its software and hardware for heterogenous computing, while AMD has so far been content to remain more of a spectator.
Ready or not, six-core computing is coming, and it’s coming from both sides of the tracks. We all know about Intel’s plan to move to six-core chips, which will start with the Core i7 980X, a pricey processor (think at least $1,000) designed for socket 1366 systems. Look for this one to debut around the end of March.
But AMD also has plans to compete in the six-core sector and, according to news and rumor site DigiTimes, will launch three six-core desktop chips under its new Phenom II x6 1000T series in May 2010. These will consist of the Phenom II X6 1075T, 1055T, and 1035T, each of which is being built on a 45nm manufacturing process.
Coinciding with AMD’s six-core parts will be a couple of new chipsets, the 890FX (RD890) and 890GX (RS880D).
No official word on pricing from either side just yet.
The Asian press got a sneak preview of AMD’s processor roadmap at the launch event for the new Phenom II and Athlon II chips. It’s no secret that AMD has been lagging behind rival Intel, but if the slides are to be believed, AMD could still come back.
It looks like AMD plans to release the “Leo” platform later this year with a 6-core 45nm process. This would be in competition with Intel’s Clarkdale CPUs at 32nm. The Leo is slated to be replaced with the 32nm Scorpius platform in 2011. This platform would apparently be equipped with a “next-generation discrete graphics solution”, Bulldozer Zambezi CPU, and up to eight cores. We will also see the mid-range Lynx platform in 2011 with "next-generation integrated graphics". Could this be what happened to Fusion?
Sure, this is just a quick presentation of a theoretical roadmap, but maybe AMD has an ace up their sleeve. If the Leo platform make the scene in 2010, that will be a good start.
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