AMD is introducing its Six-Core AMD Opteron processors (code named Istanbul) ahead of schedule and Dell is pleased to offer it in our portfolio including the Dell PowerEdge 2970, R805 and R905 rack servers and the PowerEdge M605, M805, M905 blade servers. We are committed to bringing efficiency to enterprise computing by simplifying technology and lowering the cost of managing IT environments, and the AMD Istanbul processors in our servers help us do just that.
Armando Acosta also wrote about this on the AMD@Work blog.
I recently had an opportunity to catch up with Sally Stevens, vice president, Platform Marketing, Dell and Margaret Lewis, director, Server Product Marketing, AMD, about our collaboration and shared commitment to helping our customers do more with less.
Here is what Margaret Lewis told me about AMD’s collaboration with Dell: “Dell and AMD work together to develop innovative server technologies that can effectively handle today’s most demanding workloads like virtualization, database, and cloud computing. Our approach is to provide a power efficient architecture that balances CPU, memory and I/O for a platform that can easily scale to handle heavy use.
“The six-core AMD Opteron processor provides more compute capabilities with the addition of two more cores per processor, along with increased throughput with innovations like HT Assist. It also includes AMD-V, virtualization technology, and AMD-P, power management capabilities. Dell will be offering Six-Core AMD Opteron processors in 2P and 4P rack and blade servers.”
Incorporating the new six-core AMD Opteron processors in PowerEdge servers packs a lot of compute performance in same footprint as previous generations with:
- Raw Performance – adding two more cores gives this processor a lot more juice and we are seeing huge increases on SPECint benchmarks in our initial tests;
- Energy Efficiency – Istanbul operates at the same power draw as Shanghai, so that added performance means you get better performance/watt;
- Virtualization – with AMD-V technology coupled with our server design with massive memory capacity and I/O scalability, we are seeing whopping improvements in virtualization performance our initial benchmarks. We expect to continue to have industry-leading benchmarks for four-socket servers with Istanbul in the PowerEdge R905.
We are pleased to offer our customers this powerful new AMD technology. Congratulations AMD on the successful, and early, launch of the six-core AMD Opteron processors.
Here is a little more from my conversation with Sally and Margaret.