Dell and HP launch Opteron 6200 Series servers

Leading server vendors Dell, HP and IBM all announced new hardware based on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Opteron 6200 Series processors (codenamed Interlagos), after the chip maker officially launched the world’s first 16-core processor earlier today.

AMD’s processor claims an 84 per cent floating point performance increase over competing Intel processors, with Opteron 6200 Series processors. The processors will also slot into server hardware that already has the G34 socket on motherboards.

However, the performance claims were qualified by director of server product management Brent Kerby who said, “If you want to realise the full potential, you’ll need the latest operating system kernel versions and the newest hypervisor releases.”

HP’s UK & Ireland VP for enterprise storage, servers, and networking, Iain Stephen, said that this was the case with most new [multi-core] processor launches.

“All you’ll need to do with 6200 Series processors is ‘flash’ the BIOS [standard terminology for updating the Flash-memory based Basic Input/Output System], then drop the processors into the G34 sockets,” said Stephen.

HP’s internal benchmarking using the new 16-core processors shows a 30 per cent performance advantage over earlier AMD 6100 Series processors.

The server hardware launched by HP today comprised five ProLiant x86 servers, due to ship on 29 November: the HP ProLiant BL465c G7 (€1,550), HP ProLiant BL685c G7 (€4,770), HP ProLiant DL385 G7 (€1,590), HP ProLiant DL585 G7 (€4,000) and HP ProLiant DL165 G7 (€1,065).

The DL385 and DL585 G7 ProLiant servers have 2U (two rack units) form factors, while the DL165 G7 model is a 1U form factor server.

The BL465c and BL685c G7 ProLiant servers are blade server systems which are half-height and full-height systems respectively.

Dell also refreshed some of its popular PowerEdge servers with Opteron 6200 Series processors, launching the PowerEdge R815 and C6145 PowerEdge servers.

Other vendors launching new Opteron 6200 Series hardware are Acer (through its Gateway brand), Cray and IBM.