AMD 6-core Opteron in May and 16core CPU in 2 years

[Sylvanas]

16 cores

As AMD Opteron turns six years old, Advanced Micro Devices is gearing up to start shipping six-core flavor of its server processor for revenue in several weeks time. In addition to making a rather symbolic announcement on Opteron?s sixth birthday, AMD also revealed its new server roadmap that includes twelve-core processor in 2010 and a chip with whopping sixteen cores in 2011 along with brand-new DirectConnect Architecture 2.0 server architecture.

6 core Opteron

AMD?s six-core Opteron processors code-named Istanbul feature 6MB of L3 cache, dual-channel DDR2 memory controller and are compatible with socket F infrastructure. The only tangible improvement over the quad-core Shanghai processors that the Istanbul chips have (besides increased amount of cores) is HyperTransport Assist feature, which works the same way as Intel?s snoop filter inside high-end chipsets for Intel Xeon processors (keeps cache coherency traffic between the two sockets from appearing on the external bus).

 

[brxndxn]

Awesome.. I'll finally be able to run DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS2, Slackware, Suse, Gentoo, Redhat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and OSX all at the same time..

Only then will I be truly productive.. and yet horribly fragmented.

 

[Idontcare]

This is a die-shot of 6-core 32nm Bulldozer?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/misc/p...magny_cours_bg.jpg&1=1

 

[footballrunner800]

thats a Magny-Cours Chip so 12 cores

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: brxndxn
Awesome.. I'll finally be able to run DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS2, Slackware, Suse, Gentoo, Redhat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and OSX all at the same time..

Only then will I be truly productive.. and yet horribly fragmented.

What am I supposed to do with all these cores. I'm struggling with finding stuff for my dual core as it is....and I want to move to Quad. How will I justify moving to 16??? What game is going to use 16 cores? Encoding is as fast as I need it already. Maybe I should learn to model so that I can enjoy increased rendering speed.

 

[alyarb]

if you can't keep a dual core busy, then they aren't selling this to you. wide processors with many cores have more purposes than running an encyclopedia of OSes.

 

[Sylvanas]

Is this the way we are going? In 10years time will we all be touting our 256core Intel/AMD whizzbangs? It seems like another dead end just like the mhz race was.

 

[alyarb]

was there something else you had in mind?

 

[SonicIce]

i like whizzbangs

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: brxndxn
Awesome.. I'll finally be able to run DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS2, Slackware, Suse, Gentoo, Redhat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and OSX all at the same time..

Only then will I be truly productive.. and yet horribly fragmented.

What am I supposed to do with all these cores. I'm struggling with finding stuff for my dual core as it is....and I want to move to Quad. How will I justify moving to 16??? What game is going to use 16 cores? Encoding is as fast as I need it already. Maybe I should learn to model so that I can enjoy increased rendering speed.

They are talking about server man. Companies are virtualizing their servers up the wazoo, and those servers are running applications that supports hundreds of concurrent users. So the more core the better.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
thats a Magny-Cours Chip so 12 cores

Magny Cours is 2x6, hence the dieshot includes two IC's. One IC has 6 cores.

I was asking if this is the first die-map of an IC containing bulldozer cores. I was under the impression that Magny Cours was a dual-die MCM'ed Istanbul product, i.e. Stars cores not Bulldozer.

But the article linked in the OP claims these die-shots are of bulldozer, hence my question above.

 

[veri745]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
thats a Magny-Cours Chip so 12 cores

Magny Cours is 2x6, hence the dieshot includes two IC's. One IC has 6 cores.

I was asking if this is the first die-map of an IC containing bulldozer cores. I was under the impression that Magny Cours was a dual-die MCM'ed Istanbul product, i.e. Stars cores not Bulldozer.

But the article linked in the OP claims these die-shots are of bulldozer, hence my question above.

Magny-Cours is not bulldozer, and it should be coming out way before 2011. The placement of that picture in the article is a bit confusing.

*edit* I re-read it, the only part that's really talking about the image is, "Based on an image provided by AMD ..., the high-end 6000-series will consist of two dies found in 4000-series on the same piece of substrate."

Whereas only the refreshes will be "made using 32nm process technology and will be based on code-named Bulldozer micro-architecture."

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: veri745

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: footballrunner800
thats a Magny-Cours Chip so 12 cores

Magny Cours is 2x6, hence the dieshot includes two IC's. One IC has 6 cores.

I was asking if this is the first die-map of an IC containing bulldozer cores. I was under the impression that Magny Cours was a dual-die MCM'ed Istanbul product, i.e. Stars cores not Bulldozer.

But the article linked in the OP claims these die-shots are of bulldozer, hence my question above.

Magny-Cours is not bulldozer, and it should be coming out way before 2011. The placement of that picture in the article is a bit confusing.

*edit* I re-read it, the only part that's really talking about the image is, "Based on an image provided by AMD ..., the high-end 6000-series will consist of two dies found in 4000-series on the same piece of substrate."

Whereas only the refreshes will be "made using 32nm process technology and will be based on code-named Bulldozer micro-architecture."

That part is confusing me too, it seems a tad odd to refer to both a node shrink and the debut of an entirely new architecture as merely a "refresh" of an existing product lineup.

In 2011 the Sunnyvale, California-based chip designer will refresh the Maranello server platform with AMD Opteron 6000 ?Interlagos? processor with twelve or sixteen cores and San Marino platform with AMD Opteron ?Valencia? chip with six to eight cores. Both code-named Interlagos and Valencia will be made using 32nm process technology and will be based on code-named Bulldozer micro-architecture.

Regardless my skepticism is transitioning to the prevailing perception that the die-shot is merely two neighboring Istanbul die's still on the wafer before dice-cut and has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Bulldozer regardless what the author of the article is implying by placing it directly below the quote I give above.

I guess I was just a little too hopeful that AMD had functional 32nm silicon already. If they don't then a 2011 bulldozer availability would not be too far fetched given the timeline for tapeout to first silicon to debug (and possible respin) followed by verification.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Two words: packet scanning.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Two words: packet scanning.

Why would an end-customer like you and me care about network packet scanning?

For net admins I could see this being handy for your portal/gateway servers, but unnecessary for anything behind the portal servers.

For the NSA it would be great assuming it is better/faster in some way above and beyond the hardware they already have doing packet scanning of everything that touches a big telco network.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Two words: packet scanning.

Why would an end-customer like you and me care about network packet scanning?

For net admins I could see this being handy for your portal/gateway servers, but unnecessary for anything behind the portal servers.

For the NSA it would be great assuming it is better/faster in some way above and beyond the hardware they already have doing packet scanning of everything that touches a big telco network.

I never understood this. There's so many encryption algorithms that nobody has broken; further which are mathematically secure assuming they're set up right. I don't see why it would matter if they packet scan. Do they seriously think a terrorist is not going to use encryption?

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: brxndxn
Awesome.. I'll finally be able to run DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.51, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, OS2, Slackware, Suse, Gentoo, Redhat, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and OSX all at the same time..

Only then will I be truly productive.. and yet horribly fragmented.

Sorry u said windows 95.

No machine, not even the borg collective could manage resources perfectly on windows 95.

 

[mamisano]

X-bit Labs has an article about AMD demonstrating server with 4 CPUs each with 12 cores (Magny-Cours) for a total of 48 physical cores.
If they can already show of these systems running an OS I am sure they will easily be able to meet their Q1 2010 release.

AMD looks to be hitting their targets as of late, lets hope they can keep it up... for the sake of all computer enthusiasts

 

[Soulkeeper]

looks like dirk meyer is righting the ship

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Soulkeeper
looks like dirk meyer is righting the ship

Let's hope the corrosion from submersion for so long is not so much that she needs to be skuttled even still. Talk about giving a CEO a broken burned out husk of a business and asking for miracles.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Two words: packet scanning.

Why would an end-customer like you and me care about network packet scanning?

For net admins I could see this being handy for your portal/gateway servers, but unnecessary for anything behind the portal servers.

For the NSA it would be great assuming it is better/faster in some way above and beyond the hardware they already have doing packet scanning of everything that touches a big telco network.

I never understood this. There's so many encryption algorithms that nobody has broken; further which are mathematically secure assuming they're set up right. I don't see why it would matter if they packet scan. Do they seriously think a terrorist is not going to use encryption?

The current head of homeland security (napolitano, appointed by obama) warns about "right wing" and "veterans" as potential terrorists... like piracy, the "enemy" it "targets" is a straw man, the idea is to spy on people who think they have nothing to hide, not on criminals.

 

[waffleironhead]

Originally posted by: taltamir


The current head of homeland security (napolitano, appointed by obama) warns about "right wing" and "veterans" as potential terrorists... like piracy, the "enemy" it "targets" is a straw man, the idea is to spy on people who think they have nothing to hide, not on criminals.

Please keep the P&N conspiracies over in P&N where they belong.

 

[Hacp]

So intel's I7 based server chips haven't come out for more than a few months and AMD already has an answer. I'm thinking AMD's chip will at least be competative with Intel.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Two words: packet scanning.

Why would an end-customer like you and me care about network packet scanning?

For net admins I could see this being handy for your portal/gateway servers, but unnecessary for anything behind the portal servers.

For the NSA it would be great assuming it is better/faster in some way above and beyond the hardware they already have doing packet scanning of everything that touches a big telco network.

I never understood this. There's so many encryption algorithms that nobody has broken; further which are mathematically secure assuming they're set up right. I don't see why it would matter if they packet scan. Do they seriously think a terrorist is not going to use encryption?

The current head of homeland security (napolitano, appointed by obama) warns about "right wing" and "veterans" as potential terrorists... like piracy, the "enemy" it "targets" is a straw man, the idea is to spy on people who think they have nothing to hide, not on criminals.

Well, the NSA really doesn't have any reason to spy on us. They're wasting their time. Maybe they're just practicing currently.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Two words: packet scanning.

Why would an end-customer like you and me care about network packet scanning?

For net admins I could see this being handy for your portal/gateway servers, but unnecessary for anything behind the portal servers.

For the NSA it would be great assuming it is better/faster in some way above and beyond the hardware they already have doing packet scanning of everything that touches a big telco network.

More to the point, why would an end-customer like you or I care about having 16 cores on our desk? Which we inevitably will. I wounder how long it will take the software jocks to catch up? Another decade? Will Windows 7 actually effectively use the 4-core desktops we already have?

Other than a new McAfee/Symantec scanning product that allows every desktop to allocate 4-6 cores simply to examine packets or data flows for possible attacks, I can't see any possible reason to have such a huge scale on the desktop. Nobody, except a tiny sliver of people for work, is going to need it.

It's great that AMD is scaling up their offerings, but I doubt there will be much benefit to the mass consumer computing market except in the usual few esoteric modeling benchmarks and the apps they reflect. You're still limited by software. Paying for 8 cores that I will never use doesn't strike me as a good bargain.

We abandoned the CPU MHz arms race some time ago to concentrate on scaling up the core count. I'll take a wild guess and say that eventually we may see a crackup or a massive change in the CPU industry because really, what are they supposed to do? They can't keep scaling the core count forever. And they've already nearly reached the practical performance limits with the current technology. There's a reason why these guys have never released a 4 GHz SKU.

And the software is nowhere near taking advantage of what we already have. Without a major technological advance within the next 6-8 years in fabrication, CPU architecture, materials or most likely all three, I think the CPU vendors are in some danger of fabbing themselves into a corner. Maybe the next big advance will be in the nature of neural computing... Or Intel will start building their fabs in orbit, or something...