opteron

New computers may eliminate need for nuclear tests

The government will spend $26 million on high-end computers to cut costs and standardize systems among the three U.S. labs charged with ensuring the safety and reliability of the nation's aging nuclear stockpile.

The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded the multimillion-dollar contract to Milpitas, Calif.-based Appro to supply Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories with 438 teraflop high-performance computing clusters based on the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. To date, each of these labs had used its own combination of computer systems, which were not always compatible with the others.

"This … Read more

Cool customers hot for Barcelona

Earlier this week, Advanced Micro Devices finally introduced the first true quad-core microprocessor in the PC market, code-named "Barcelona" and launched as part of AMD's Opteron line. David Kanter provided an excellent technical analysis of Barcelona on his Real World Technologies site.

Barcelona is not the absolutely fastest processor on the market. For single-core performance, both IBM and Intel offer faster chips. With multiple cores working, Intel and Sun can claim higher performance per socket--Intel because it can put two high-frequency dual-core chips in one socket, and Sun because it has an eight-core processor (the UltraSparc T2).

Although I'm sure AMD wishes it could claim those titles, there's another metric that matters even more to some customers. Barcelona delivers high… Read more

Early word on AMD's Barcelona chips: More efficient than powerful

AMD released its long-awaited Barcelona server chip today while Intel upped its earning forecast, underscoring the importance of AMD's latest release. AMD has lost ground in the server market since Intel launched its Core architecture, and things are even more one-sided with desktops and laptops with Intel's Core 2 Duo processors dominating the scene. While AMD has stated it will role out Barcelona chips for desktops under the Phenom name in December, it released new Opteron server chips today based on its native quad-core architecture.

Unlike Intel's quad-core Xeon parts, which simply package together two dual-core processors, … Read more

High-end Xeon goes quad-core with 'Tigerton'

As expected, Intel on Wednesday announced its Xeon 7300 line of quad-core chips, models geared for higher-end servers with four or more processors.

The processors will range in frequency from a 2.93GHz for a 130-watt model to 1.86GHz for a 50-watt high-efficiency model. Intel also will offer an intermediate 80-watt class, the company said. Prices will range from $856 to $2,301 in quantities of 1,000.

The chips, code-named Tigerton, bring Intel's Core architecture to high-end x86 servers, replacing the last of the Netburst lineage. Netburst's eventual power consumption problems opened the door for Advanced … Read more

A shift in Intel bus architecture coming next year

Intel will come with a new way to connect its chips in 2008/2009, a shift that marks a big change in how the company's chips function.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker will move to the Common System Interface, a high-speed way to connect chips, at that time. David Kanter of Real World Technologies provides more details here.

Intel put out the first papers on CSI in 2004 and has provided incremental details as well as changed some of the details over the years. (Sometimes, people called it Common System Interconnect.) Canter, though, gives you a pretty thorough … Read more