While there will be demand for 32-bit Intel and clone processors for many years to come, big jobs will inevitably require 64-bit computing. AMD’s Opteron, which can run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, may give Intel lots of grief if it takes off in the server space because Itanium can’t run 32-bit X86 code and has its own instruction set.

AMD has been banging at the corporate door for years, and after trying to get onto the corporate desktops with its Athlon chips, it has figured out it is easier to get into shops through the data center. Athlon processors are increasingly popular as platforms for running technical workloads on Linux clusters, and the Opterons, because of the substantial architectural improvements AMD has made with the Hammer chips and its associated chipset, are going to be quite attractive.

Linux support will be available immediately, but because few commercial applications are running on Linux at this time, the impact on commercial users will less impressive than if Windows and Unix were supported on the AMD chip. Windows Server 2003 will be available for the chips in the Standard and Enterprise Editions in beta by mid-2003, and will probably be in production by the end of the year or early next year. The word on the street is that AMD and Microsoft are working on a version of Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition for Opteron-based servers, but we hear this will not be ready to roll out in production environments until mid-2004. (The 32-bit versions of Windows 2000 will apparently work on the boxes, however.)

That a Datacenter Edition exists on the Opteron machines is surprising, because the Opteron and its HyperTransport interconnect only scale to eight-way symmetric multiprocessing right now. The AMD Opteron chip/8000 chipset combo is based on two-way cell boards that are clustered into a eight-way machine through a four-port HyperTransport hub. This is very similar to the design IBM has for its Summit chipset for the xSeries 440. However, IBM is using four-way cell boards in the xSeries 440. The existence of a future Datacenter Edition for Opteron machines seems to indicate that AMD is thinking of building bigger boxes, perhaps with 16 or 32 processors in a single system image. AMD could get to 16 processors by moving from four to eight ports in the HyperTransport switch or by moving to four-way cell boards. If AMD did both at the same time, it would have a 32-way machine.

AMD has never officially given out clock speeds or prices, but in presentations concerning the performance of the Opterons, the company provides charts that show it available in 1.2GHz, 1.4GHz, 1.8GHz, and 2GHz. Some press reports indicate AMD will debut Opteron at 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz, others say a 2 GHz part will also debut. AMD refused to comment on the Opteron chip prior to the announcement, which takes place tomorrow in New York.

The chip includes 128KB of L2 cache and 1MB of on-chip L2 cache. The Opteron design also includes an on-chip DDR-SDRAM memory controller – an industry first and the source of many performance benefits. This allows the memory controller to run at the same core frequency as the Opteron processor (off chip memory controllers typically run at half speed or slower). And with each chip having its own memory controller, memory bandwidth scales as Opterons are added to a processor complex. This is a big deal. Each processor can have eight DIMMS, and that means 8GB of main memory per processor using today’s DRR-SDRAM technology. That gives an eight-way Opteron box 64GB of main memory and 5.3GB/sec of memory bandwidth to play with.

Here’s why that matters: The performance specs I have seen indicate that clock-for-clock on the SPECint2000 and SPECfp2000 processor benchmarks, the 64-bit Opterons have a 30% or so performance advantage on number-crunching jobs and about twice the performance on integer work compared to the Prestonia Pentium 4 Xeon DP processors. That’s a big performance boost, and it is one you would expect when comparing 64-bit applications to 32-bit applications.

Servers based on the Xeon DP and Xeon MP processors from Intel are what AMD seems to be targeting explicitly, but implicitly, the Opteron is also going to go after Itanium. If the 2GHz Opterons sell for under $800, as expected, and can deliver about the same performance as the future Madison Itanium 2 chips (as I estimate they will be able to do on commercial workloads), how will Intel be able to sell Madisons in all but the largest machines that scale beyond AMD designs? Intel will have to slash Itanium 2 prices from their current highs of several thousand dollars a pop just to keep AMD out. Anyone looking for an eight-way, 64-bit server running Windows or Linux in late 2003 or throughout 2004 will have to take a look at the AMD alternative. This prospect can’t be making Intel happy.

While none of the big server makers has committed to supporting the Opteron and its 8000 chipset, what is obvious is that vendors that hate Intel’s Itanium but want to extend their reach into the X86 market would be wise to endorse Opteron, even if they don’t push it hard. Hewlett Packard Co has thus far bet all of its chips (so to speak) on Itanium, but it is remotely possible – although unlikely – that HP will support Opterons in ProLiant or rx Series servers running Linux or Windows 2000 and later, Windows 2003. Sun Microsystems Inc, which hates Intel and Microsoft, will probably endorse AMD’s chips across its 32-bit and 64-bit Linux lines going forward, and has been mumbling about the possibilities. Anything that hurts both Intel and Microsoft at the same time is going to attract Sun.

IBM Corp and Dell Computer Corp have been mum on their plans for AMD processors, but both vendors are as loyal to their own bottom lines as they are to their partners Intel and Microsoft. If it makes sense for them to launch AMD-based servers and if this can give them leverage with AMD and against Intel, you can bet they won’t let the white box server makers rule the AMD server market for very long.

Source: Computerwire