AMD claims four-socket power at two-socket price

Opteron 6100 set to redefine the two-socket server market, says chip firm

The Opteron 6100 is the first 12-core x86 processor

AMD will today unveil its Opteron 6100 processors with eight to 12 cores, which it expects will meet demand from customers for systems more powerful than current two-socket servers, but without the hefty price tag of four-socket models.

Available immediately, the Opteron 6100, codenamed Magny-Cours, is designed for two- or four-socket systems running demanding applications such as databases and virtualisation.

The new chips also offer an increase in memory capacity and I/O bandwidth over existing Opterons through four DDR3 memory channels and an extra HyperTransport 3.0 interconnect channel, bringing the total to four.

Leading vendors such as Dell, HP and Acer are expected to have systems based on the new platform for sale almost immediately, AMD said.

Leslie Sobon, AMD's vice president of product and platform marketing, explained that the company is aiming to "turn the volume server market on its side" and introduce a new vector of price/performance per watt.

"The market is currently asking 2P servers to do a lot. At the low end, they are competing with 1P servers based on a desktop architecture, while at the high end 2P servers are used by customers that want 4P but can't afford it," she said.

AMD claims four-socket power at two-socket price

Opteron 6100 set to redefine the two-socket server market, says chip firm

AMD's strategy is to split its 2P volume server segment into two, addressed at the bottom by its Opteron 4100 series, announced last November but yet to ship, and at the top by the Opteron 6100 series.

"The 6100 series is '2P Plus'; you can build and configure a server as a 2P system and expand to 4P when necessary, without penalty," said Sobon.

AMD's first batch of the new Opterons consists of three 80W eight-core models clocked at 2.4GHz, 2.3GHz and 2GHz, while the 80W 12-core chips run at 2.2GHz, 2.1GHz and 1.9GHz.

There is also a single high-power 105W Model 6176 SE 12-core chip at 2.3GHz, plus three high efficiency 65W models, a 12-core chip clocked at 1.7GHz and eight-core chips at 2GHz and 1.8GHz.

Prices for the 6100 series start at $266 (£179), and AMD expects customers to be able to purchase a four-socket Opteron box for about the same price as a two-socket system based on Intel's current Xeon family.

However, Sobon said that AMD is not aiming to challenge Intel in the enterprise server space with this platform.

"For us, it's about maximising the 2P space, because 2P is the mass market while enterprise is just five per cent of all server revenue," she said.

Intel is due to unveil its Nehalem EX server platform this week, which consists of an eight-core Xeon chip aimed at four-socket enterprise servers.