AMD aims 4000 series at thrifty cloud and SMB buyers

Cloud-optimised hardware at 'insane' prices

AMD has announced a series of low-cost processors aimed at cloud providers and small to medium sized businesses (SMBs).

The 4000 series is designed for one- or two-processor platforms where raw power for virtualisation is not as important as low running and purchase costs.

"[The cloud] is not a heavy compute area," Brent Kerby, senior product manager for AMD's Server and Workstation division, told V3.co.uk.

"A big volume proportion of the cloud has to have just enough performance, and power is the primary buying criteria, with purchase cost important as well."

The 4000 series will comprise nine four- and six-core models running within a 32W-75W power envelope at between 1.8GHz and 2.2GHz. Prices range from $99 to $698 (£67 to £474) in quantities of 1,000.

The low price will be a key selling point for SMBs, Kerby said, describing breaching the sub-$100 (£66) point as "insane".

"That's going to be very interesting to SMBs," he said. "In terms of value, that gets you into areas we haven't seen in the past."

The company has boosted the memory performance of the new chips, and is using clock gating to shut down little-used elements of the system like USB.

The resultant power cost reductions could be as high as 24 per cent a year, according to Kerby, saving a 10,000-server datacentre nearly $1m (£680,000) a year.

Thermal management is a key feature of the new processors, and using a standard power supply has allowed AMD to map out precise thermal envelopes and alter processor speeds to match ambient temperatures. The power levels of the grid could be managed remotely by the IT manager.

The new processors will initially be rolled out to custom server system developers and large-scale partners.

Dell DCS is a key initial partner, and AMD will make system builder reference designs available to the reseller community. Gateway and Acer will bring out off-the-shelf systems next year.