AMD quad core

Hi Folks,

Looks like the AMD quad core is going to be available
for sale very very soon. Then the Linux community
will have to tweak the existing distros to fully
utilize its capacity.

Tony

***
AMD's new 'quad-core' server chip seen as critical to
chip maker's success
September 10, 2007 - 3:20PM

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is set to launch its
highly publicized new server chip Monday, delivering
the biggest jolt to its product lineup in four years.

The company's redesigned Opteron processor is the
first from AMD to feature four computing engines on a
single chip instead of just one or two.

AMD's belated entry into the "quad-core" market is a
critical element in the financially strapped company's
offensive against Intel Corp., the world's largest
semiconductor company, whose market value of $148
billion (euro108 billion) makes it 21 times bigger
than AMD.

Intel has outspent its smaller rival on new
technologies and better absorbed the pain of a brutal
price battle that has led to embarrassing market-share
losses AMD hopes its new chip will reverse.

AMD has overhauled the design of the original Opteron
chip, which the company says is the most important
improvement in delivering higher performance, and is
using a different engineering strategy than Intel.

Intel's four-core chips are actually a package of two
chips with two cores each. In AMD's four-core chips,
all the cores are placed on a single piece of silicon.

Industry observers have debated whether either
strategy matters in terms of performance.

Adding more processors allows chips to handle multiple
task at once, a crucial ability, particularly in
corporate data centers.

AMD was not a player in the lucrative server processor
market until it released its first Opteron chip in
2003. Demand soared because of its energy efficiency,
ease of use in servers that can handle multiple
processors and other technological features, and by
last year, Sunnyvale, California-based AMD had grown
to capture about a quarter of the worldwide market,
according to Mercury Research.

But Santa Clara, California-based Intel fought back
last year with a strong new lineup of chips based on a
new design, and it also beat AMD to market with its
first four-core chips.

Compared with Intel's new products, AMD's product line
began to look dated, and its market share plunged. AMD
now controls only about 13 percent of the server
market.

"What is key about this product is really getting back
some of that lost share," said Dean McCarron, Mercury
Research's president and principal analyst.

AMD's path toward Monday's launch has been rocky, with
AMD Chief Executive Hector Ruiz saying the chips are
launching about six months behind schedule. Some
analysts and investors expressed disappointment that
the chips available at launch are slower than expected
_ operating at 1.9 gigahertz to 2.3 gigahertz,
depending on the model.

AMD said it will boost their speed later this year. By
comparison, Intel's fastest Xeon server processors
operate at 3.0 gigahertz, which measures processing
cycles per second.

© 2007 AP DIGITAL

Reference:http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/AMD39s-new-39quadcore39-server-chip-seen-as-critical-to-chip-maker39s-success/2007/09/10/1189276584061.html
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Sun Sep 9 22:59:13 2007