AMD scores win with Microservers

[mrmt]

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/news/article.asp?docKey=600-201303040800CCNMATHWCANADAPR_0857652001-1&params=timestamp||03/04/2013%208:00%20AM%20ET||headline||AMD%27s%20SeaMicro%20Server%20Powers%20New%20Worlds%20and%20Heroic%20Alter%20Egos%20for%20Red%205%20Studios%27%20%22FireFall%22%20Mobile%20Gaming%20Center||docSource||Marketwire%20-%20Canada||provider||ACQUIREMEDIA||bridgesymbol||US;AMD&ticker=AMD


--(Marketwire - March 04, 2013) - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that Red 5 Studios, developer of free-to-play online games designed to connect millions of players around the world, has deployed an AMD SeaMicro server with the SeaMicro Freedom(TM) fabric to power a high-performance mobile gaming unit (MGU.) The MGU, which is a 48-foot bus, was created as part of the launch for its new game "FireFall," an award-winning sci-fi massively multiplayer online (MMO) shooter. The result is a mobile vehicle that can support up to 3,000 simultaneous players in one location and connect gamers from any location to millions of others around the world.


Red 5 Studios selected the revolutionary SeaMicro SM10000-XE(TM) server for its high-performance system, power efficiency and a compact form factor to accommodate the space and power constraints of the MGU. When evaluating other vendors, they found that power efficiency and a small footprint came at the sacrifice of other critical capabilities such as high computing performance and high low-latency bandwidth. AMD's SeaMicro SM10000-XE delivered the required performance without sacrifice.

(...)

==============

SME10000-XE specs:

http://www.seamicro.com/products/SM10000XE

Processor
Total No. of Processors per system 64
No. of Processors per Compute Card 1
No. of Compute Cards per system

Processor Specification

Quad Core, Octal Thread x86 Sandy Bridge Processor

Intel E3-1260L

==============================

Nice to see the winds of change at AMD.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Hmmmm... it's using a Xeon CPU...

 

[beginner99]

lol and they contain intel CPUs. I bet intel gets a higher margin on these than AMD does.

 

[Jimzz]

Hmmmm... it's using a Xeon CPU...

Until Amd Jaguar's come out they kinda have to.

Piledriver = to much power
Brazos = not enough bandwidth or IPC. That and missing instructions as well.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Pretty much what beginner99 said. Intel probably makes more profit than AMD here. On the upper side, they're making a bit of money regardless, or so i think

 

[Olikan]

sarcastic thread is sarcastic

 

[mrmt]

sarcastic thread is sarcastic

Don't shoot the messenger, even AMD is advertising using Xeon processors:

http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/Red-5-Studios-Case-Study.pdf

(...)

In a small closet on the MGU, the SeaMicro SM10000-XE provides 256 Intel ® Xeon ®cores with 40 Gbps of bandwidth to the gaming clients. Internally, the system provides the 64 individual servers over 1.28 Tbps bandwidth over SeaMicro Freedom™ Supercompute Fabric. Red 5 Studio’s mobile gaming environment was created with the capacity and performance to support thousands of gamers simultaneously.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You cant be picky if you wish to sell products.

 

[Abwx]

Actually this product was conceived and launched before AMD
did buy Seamicro but it doesnt matter , it s some snake oil good enough
for the usual AMD bashers that are , or rather is in this case, blatlantly
downplaying this fact and doing obvious misinformation.

 

[happysmiles]

Until Amd Jaguar's come out they kinda have to.

Piledriver = to much power
Brazos = not enough bandwidth or IPC. That and missing instructions as well.

TOO

 

[inf64]

They are obviously going to make money on this deal so I don't see what's the downside. Also they will use this for marketing purposes which is also benefiting them.

 

[mrmt]

They are obviously going to make money on this deal so I don't see what's the downside. Also they will use this for marketing purposes which is also benefiting them.

Downside in the business? Not at all. But you have to ask why AMD management spent some 300 million dollars in order to build a business that cannot use Opteron chips.

They have already Opteron microservers, but one year after the acquisition we are seeing new products launching with Intel chips and their success cases are all with Intel chips. Where does AMD chips fit on this picture?

 

[inf64]

Downside in the business? Not at all. But you have to ask why AMD management spent some 300 million dollars in order to build a business that cannot use Opteron chips.

They have already Opteron microservers, but one year after the acquisition we are seeing new products launching with Intel chips and their success cases are all with Intel chips. Where does AMD chips fit on this picture?

They do have Opterons in their microserver offer. This customer has chosen Xeon based solution,so what? Opteron offers great perf./$ since Opterons offer similar throughput and similar power numbers for a bit less money. Xeons are clearly better for bursty workloads and customers choose according to their needs.

 

[mrmt]

They do have Opterons in their microserver offer. This customer has chosen Xeon based solution,so what? Opteron offers great perf./$ since Opterons offer similar throughput and similar power numbers for a bit less money. Xeons are clearly better for bursty workloads and customers choose according to their needs.

This? Good luck finding a high profile Seamicro customer that took the Opteron route.

AMD bought an interconnect business that has no synergy with their CPU business. Instead of AMD's bottom line, their Seamicro business is contributing to boost AMD competitor's profits.

 

[Abwx]

Downside in the business? Not at all. But you have to ask why AMD management spent some 300 million dollars in order to build a business that cannot use Opteron chips.

They have already Opteron microservers, but one year after the acquisition we are seeing new products launching with Intel chips and their success cases are all with Intel chips. Where does AMD chips fit on this picture?

This SB based server was launched two months before the buyout ,
that is 14months ago , so we can expect Seamicro to get rid of theses only in a few months because a server is supposed to have
a little more than a one year production to at least amortize RD...

Expect those intel based servers to disappear in one year or two
at most , once Steamroller based server CPUs are launched.

 

[Jovec]

This? Good luck finding a high profile Seamicro customer that took the Opteron route.

AMD bought an interconnect business that has no synergy with their CPU business. Instead of AMD's bottom line, their Seamicro business is contributing to boost AMD competitor's profits.

This might be true, but completely irrelevant. $100 million in profit (random number) is easily worth more to AMD than denying Intel $250 million in profit.

 

[mrmt]

This might be true, but completely irrelevant. $100 million in profit (random number) is easily worth more to AMD than denying Intel $250 million in profit.

Intel isn't a server vendor. AMD is in fact improving Intel profits. AMD is opening new markets for Intel chips.

 

[Ferzerp]

AMD's server marketshare is so poor that they put out a press release for selling a single one (made with Intel CPUs)?

 

[Jovec]

Intel isn't a server vendor. AMD is in fact improving Intel profits. AMD is opening new markets for Intel chips.

If Intel and AMD were on equal financial footing, then this is an issue. They are not. They are not even close. However much this venture may make for AMD is worth more to them they however much money Intel makes off of it. You can argue this is a bad venture (I make no claim one way of the other), but you can't argue that it is a bad venture because it puts money in Intel's coffers.

 

[Piroko]

Intel isn't a server vendor. AMD is in fact improving Intel profits. AMD is opening new markets for Intel chips.

I disagree. Intel already has a strong market presence in compact racks. You could also get 10 blades with 4 CPUs á 6 cores from IBM or HP in a 19" rack afaik. That's 240 cores vs. 256 cores in the SeaMicro rack.

But this will build up the SeaMicro name and it will give a connection to AMD even if it's only via press releases.

 

[mrmt]

I disagree. Intel already has a strong market presence in compact racks. You could also get 10 blades with 4 CPUs á 6 cores from IBM or HP in a 19" rack afaik. That's 240 cores vs. 256 cores in the SeaMicro rack.

Point taken. AMD isn't open new markets for Intel, but helping it consolidating its position.

 

[Lonyo]

AMD selling Intel processors is better for AMD than HP or Dell selling Intel processors.

 

[Ferzerp]

for each 10U with HP/Dell/etc, you can fit 32 sockets of normal Xeons.

These are the low end ones though with 64 sockets

These may be 64 sockets in 10U, but they're only quad cores instead of 8. There's not a lot special about the density here. Some savings on power though.

Right now, I use E-2670's which are about 4W per core more power usage than this thing, but the core density is the exact same, and I'm not buying from an OEM who as soon as they're able, will replace their product line with low end AMD stuff.

These also only support 32GB of RAM per socket, which is far too low. Right now, my standard is 128GB per socket, which would translate to twice the memory per core of this.

edit: ok, looking at it, "average power consumption" doesn't seem all that impressive. The config that I'm citing about can go up to atound 6.5kW, but "average" is also around 3.5 kW.

 

[mrmt]

However much this venture may make for AMD is worth more to them they however much money Intel makes off of it. You can argue this is a bad venture (I make no claim one way of the other), but you can't argue that it is a bad venture because it puts money in Intel's coffers.

That's exactly what I'm arguing.

When AMD bought Seamicro I had a feeling that it was more of the same ATI movie we saw in 2006, and that's no surprise because more than half of the BoD that approved the ATI deal was still there to approve the Seamicro deal.

But the similarities don't end here. Both companies had technologies that AMD deemed somehow essential for their future (GPU, Interconnect), both companies were acquired in cash and both were rushed decisions (ATI deal happened after the Nvidia deal went under, Seamicro after they tried to sell themselves to Intel), and as expected, AMD can't do much with its acquired toy.

Their chips are so behind that their own server factory is using Intel chips for that matter, and this isn't a transitory stage, as Seamicro new servers are using Ivy Bridge server chips. The money they spent on Seamicro would have been better spent in more R&D for their server chips, this way they could have chips worth of putting in servers or at least saved for the rough times they would pass. Instead they got a server factory that sells Intel chips, meaning 0 synergies with AMD CPU/GPU business.

 

[SlowSpyder]

WTF, INTEL?! C'MON GUYS!