AMD Phenom and Barcelona debut... eh.

[ronrem]

The point for a lot of us is not the early release big $ server chips---but the trickle down when AMD desktop stuff running K-10 can be cost effective even for power hungry gamers-and on the other end of the line-can be a good low watt low power option for those who want more than a Sempron's power.

Eventually....there will be even cheap 65 NM Sempys running K-10 with all the newfangled stuff.

Then....45 nm, and that's when it gets really nifty if you dig silence----and we do like it quiet. When? How cheap? Intel probably gets to 45 nm first,but AMD really really does not want to lag. The Barcelona/Phenom design SHOULD give at LEAST equal performance/efficiency at any die shrink,so if Intel does not go 45 nm 6 mo sooner,AMD is in decent shape,could even regain the lead.

I'd LOVE to see AMD go with a super low watt-low heat proc with about the power of a 3600 X2....yet the thermal efficiency a die shrink to 45 nm can give.

[accord1999]

A few early production boards had a problem, but those boards were never sold to retail. And I doubt it had anything to do with the chipset, probably SuperMicro's fault. And right now, a number of SuperMicro and Tyan MBs don't support quad-core Opterons either.

Intel has several chipsets yes, but they each target different sectors of the market which is not unreasonable given the market share they hold. And most data centers are buying their servers from the Tier-1 OEMs, and the particular revisions of a chipset are of little concern.

[smilingcrow]

The real issue is the platform churn.
AMD brought out Rev F in August of last year. Barcelona plugs into that socket, shanghai (next gen) plugs into that socket. Same socket, but more importantly, same chipset.
Intel introduced dempsey in may. Chipset spin for Woodcrest. Then Clovertown in November. Another chipset spin. Now they talk about penryn - 1 more chipset spin.
So, for enterprise customers, one platform for Rev F, Barcelona and Shanghai, only BIOS revs.
For intel:
Dempsey boards - some don't support Woodcrest
Woodcrest boards - some don't support Clovertown
Clovertown boards - some don't upport penryn
Penryn boards - who knows
If you deal with data center servers, consistency is a good thing. Chipset revs and incompatible boards are a bad thing.

I don't expect you to like the amd strategy, but let's face it, it's far more customer friendly.

Well you’d be wrong as I think the Opteron platform is excellent and this backward compatibility along with scalability and low power draw at idle are very strong features. I’m a bit under whelmed by the Barcelona release but that’s as much to do with the initial low clock speeds and the delay as anything. Looking forward to seeing clock speeds ramp up soon.

One reason I was pushing for data on San Clemente is that it has the potential to be of interest to the SPCR crowd that are looking to build a 2 way workstation. For Intel to be more competitive against AMD in that small niche they need a more ‘friendly’ chipset. There are rumours that Nvidia may produce a chipset for Xeon 2P although I’m not clear whether they have a license or not!

I like to see strong competition in all sectors regardless of who has the current lead. I’d like to see AMD more competitive in the mobile sector which should happen next year when the next platform is released. Likewise I’d like to see Intel more competitive in 2 way sector. I just prefer more choice when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

[austinbike]

Competition is good. Look at the server world. 4 years ago you had 100W+ single core processors and a roadmap showing the joys of fully buffered dimms. Oh, and we were paying a tremendous amount of money for small amounts of performance.

Competition ultimately gave customers better performance, lower power, lower cost and more choice.

Regardless of whcih processors you buy, a strong AMD is a strong market. A weak AMD ultimately puts us right back where we were before.

OSX is the same. And Linux. Competitve pressure can't be under rated, ever.

I love vista, but if it wasn't for OSX I would never have vista. But someone has to do something about the memory requirements.

If I could get an amd processor in an apple notebook I would seriously consider it.

Competition is good.

[tibetan mod king]

"Furthermore, Tyan will introduce Quad-Core AMD Opteron-based platforms based on current design to support AMD’s Dual Dynamic Power Management™ technology, which offers separate power planes for cores and memory controller for optimum performance with reduced power consumption."

http://tyan.com/newsroom_pressroom_detail.aspx?id=1238

It is silly to think that there really is any large degree of backward compatibility for new generation processors. There are a few exceptions here and there, but mostly it makes sense to get a new motherboard for a new processor. And to get that motherboard a while after introduction so you get the fixed version, not the buggy version.

Having been an Opteron user from the early Tyan boards and having gone through the many changes in each model to work properly, I know it will be a year, give or take, before the Barcelona ecosystem (chips, BIOS, motherboards, drivers, etc) is stable, reliable, and pleasant to use.

AMD management failed miserably in not bringing out a MCM style quad core chip. Especially when AMD already had HyperTransport and could have connected the cores very simply. This braindead management failure easily cost AMD $5-10 billion.

Barcelona quad core is basically a bust at this point. The vaporware launch with no availability of the chips or systems built with the chips was pretty telling. There will be a fixed version of this processor next year, early 2H08 that will be pretty good. This newer design benefits from a larger L3 cache too.

For today, Intel's 65nm and 45nm chips are very good. Just don't forget to update your BIOS to work around a few bad bugs.

[austinbike]

AMD management failed miserably in not bringing out a MCM style quad core chip.

MCM increases the power and heat of the processors.

Intel Dual Xeons: 40W, 65W, 80W
Intel Quad Xeons: 50W, 80W, 120W

(+~45W for northbridge)

AMD Dual Opteron: 68W, 95W, 120W
AMD Quad Opteron: 68W, 95W, 120W

MCM is a packaging exercise, but what most customers want is lower power, less heat. You really need to go native for that. Intel is calling out penryn TDPs as being the same for clovertown, so 45nm won't buy you much in power/thermal efficiency.

[smilingcrow]

"Furthermore, Tyan will introduce Quad-Core AMD Opteron-based platforms based on current design to support AMD’s Dual Dynamic Power Management™ technology, which offers separate power planes for cores and memory controller for optimum performance with reduced power consumption."

It is silly to think that there really is any large degree of backward compatibility for new generation processors. There are a few exceptions here and there, but mostly it makes sense to get a new motherboard for a new processor. And to get that motherboard a while after introduction so you get the fixed version, not the buggy version.

Regardless of the need for a Socket F+ board to get all the features of Barcelona I still think that AMD should be applauded for designing a platform that in many cases will scale all the way from 90nm dual-core through to 45nm quad-core.
There may also be a requirement for a Socket F++ (or whatever it may be called) board to get all the benefits of Shanghai (45nm) but at least you have the choice of upgrading and getting most of the benefits.

Having been an Opteron user from the early Tyan boards and having gone through the many changes in each model to work properly, I know it will be a year, give or take, before the Barcelona ecosystem (chips, BIOS, motherboards, drivers, etc) is stable, reliable, and pleasant to use.

The way that Barcelona has been released would make me very wary of touching the socket F+ platform for a much longer time than normal. Until they release a new stepping that hits higher clock speeds I’d even be wary of buying the current stepping CPUs to upgrade a server. I’d like to see first if the launch stepping has issues; power consumption!

MCM increases the power and heat of the processors.

Intel Dual Xeons: 40W, 65W, 80W
Intel Quad Xeons: 50W, 80W, 120W

AMD Dual Opteron: 68W, 95W, 120W
AMD Quad Opteron: 68W, 95W, 120W

MCM is a packaging exercise, but what most customers want is lower power, less heat. You really need to go native for that. Intel is calling out penryn TDPs as being the same for clovertown, so 45nm won't buy you much in power/thermal efficiency.

The AMD figures are flattered in two ways:

1. AMD’s dual-cores have a max TDP of 50% higher than Intel’s so their quads in comparison can easily look good.
2. Intel’s 120W TDP applies to only the top bin, is this also the case for AMD? (I checked and it applies to the top 3 bins)

If you ignore the X5460 sitting at the top of the Penryn pile you get:

Xeon E5345 2.33GHz 65nm 80W
Xeon E5450 3GHz 45nm 80W

When you add in the improved IPC of Penryn you get a useful increase in performance per watt for the CPUs.

MCM is definitely a disadvantage at idle as you in affect have two dual-core chips idling. At load though I don’t see it as being a significant disadvantage. If you look at the power data for Barcelona v Xeon in the Techreport review what stood out for me was how good AMD were at idle and that they seemed disappointing at load. Penryn can only make this comparison worse but hopefully AMD will have a better revision of Barcelona that will make it more competitive.

[austinbike]

Don't forget the FB DIMM tax:

AMD 95W
2 procs: 190W
Southbridge : 15W
8 DIMMs (DDR-2): 35W

total 240W

Intel 80W
2 procs: 160W
Southbridge + Northbridge : 45W
8 DIMMs (FBD): 83W

total 288W

AMD has an integrated NB controller and lower power memory. Why choose 8 DIMMs? That is what intel recommends for best performance.

[ronrem]

TDP is a vague guide...rather like a fan maker's spec on decibels. You wind up with a worst case comparison of apples and oranges that has some crucial exceptions.

Eventually......someone plugs each chip into the wall and gets a real world number....or that COULD happen. We are meanwhile still fuzzy on the real world heat output-watt consumption of an X2 and Core 2 of similar price or power.

Projecting stuff as yet unavailable is pretty hazy. I DO assume that K 10 takes the best of K8,adds some of Core 2's better ideas,and adds a few new things and once mature is some nice gear. Intel won't vegetate again,but
I think we will get some good choices and a good trend in bang for the buck.

[austinbike]

There are plenty of "at the wall" comparisons of AMD and Intel.

At the wall, at idle, or under load, apples to apples, amd will draw less than intel. The combination of the integrated memory controller, DDR-2 memory and same power (dual to quad) will keep amd in the lead.

Intel does best in apps that are clock and cache bound, amd does best in apps that are memory and I/O bound.

AMD always beats intel in power.

Choose the platform that best matches your needs. Outside of that, we have probably spent too much time on that.

[smilingcrow]

The “at the wallâ€

[smilingcrow]

Techreport have a preview of the soon to be released (November) next generation Xeon platform (Stoakley/Harpertown) which show a large reduction in power consumption at load but not much gain at idle – see here for details.

This link shows just how much AMD benefits in terms of power consumption from not using FB-DIMMs.
It reminds me of the old Ian Dury song ‘What a waste’. Diamond geezer, heard him in concert when I was in school.