AMD Dials Down Opteron Power with New Versions

On Monday, AMD launched the six-core AMD Opteron HE and SE, providing additional energy efficiency for the Opteron server processor family.

The new HE chips deliver 18 percent better performance per watt than the standard-wattage version of Istanbul, the underlying processor architecture that forms the foundation for both of the new families of chips.

AMD said that the new 55-watt Opteron HE processors are currently shipping for two-way, four-way, and eight-way systems from HP's Proliant family, with additional systems from other OEMs slated for the third quarter of 2009. AMD did not disclose the clock speed of the chips, but said that the new six-core Opteron SE will run at 2.4-GHz for two-, four-, and eight-way systems.

The price of the two-way AMD Opteron 2423 HE will be $455, while the eight-way Opteron 8425 HE will be $1,514. The two-way, six-core AMD Opteron 2439 SE will be $1,019, while the eight-way, Opteron 8439 SE is priced at $2,649.

AMD has made it a point to meet or exceed its roadmap timetable with its most recent products; the launch of the new HE and SE chips comes just two weeks into the third quarter.

AMD said in June that it would launch the HE, SE, and EE versions during the third quarter, following the unveiling of the Istanbul architecture, the foundation for both chips, on June 1.

"Since our initial introduction of multi-core processors for the server market, it's been the AMD mission to help IT managers reduce datacenter energy costs without compromising performance," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server Business, AMD, in a statement.

"These new lower power six-core AMD Opteron processors feature the highest performance-per-watt that we have brought to market, and help drive down power consumption while addressing the shifting cloud and Web landscape of today's datacenter," Patla added. "And with six cores of compute power and Direct Connect Architecture, these processors deliver no-compromise performance."

AMD Launches Fusion Media Explorer Browser

AMD has released a beta of a new 3D browser, which is designed to let users easily share multimedia files stored on their PCs with their social networks.

The browser, called Fusion Media Explorer, allows users to browse music and video albums stored on a PC, and share those files with social networks, said Casey Gotcher, director of product marketing at AMD, in a blog entry.

The software is available for download from AMD's website, but only works on PCs with an AMD processor.

AMD has integrated social-networking sites like Facebook and YouTube into the software to easily upload and share multimedia files, Gotcher wrote. Users can simply select video or music files while browsing albums in a rotating 3D interface and drag and drop to upload those directly to Facebook or YouTube.

The software works with Microsoft's Windows Vista and upcoming Windows 7 operating systems. It is not compatible with Windows XP or Linux, according to AMD.

Intel Announces 2GHz Atom Microprocessor

Intel celebrated the one-year anniversary of its popular Atom family of microprocessors on Wednesday by announcing a new 2GHz version of the chip.

Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher announced the new chip at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing on Wednesday, as he pulled a small computer out of his pocket.

“Today we’re announcing two new products in the Atom family. The Z550, this is the first 2GHz processor that will fit in your pocket...,” he said.

The Z550 is aimed at mobile Internet devices (MIDs) and works with up to 2GB of DDR2 DRAM.

The second new new Z-series Atom chip is the Z515, which can run at up to 1.2GHz speeds when needed and is also aimed at the MID market.

Both chips are made to be as power-efficient as possible to keep small battery powered devices running longer.

The two microprocessors incorporate Intel Hyperthreading technology, which enables them to more efficiently run multiple programs on a device at once and enables richer graphics.

The two new Z-series chips are already available for companies to develop products around. Pricing information was not disclosed.

Intel’s first Atom microprocessor launched last April at IDF Shanghai.

The microprocessor family has won fame for the product they’re most used in today, netbooks, or mini-laptops. The MID product segment has so far not been as successful as the netbook market.

IBM, HP, Dell Aim to Cut Costs With New Xeon Servers

The world's top server vendors on Monday updated their product lines, launching new servers to coincide with the release of Intel's next-generation Xeon processors.

IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Dell said their new low-end and midrange servers will be their fastest to date, dwarfing earlier products that ran on Intel-based chips. The servers will include Intel's latest Xeon 5500 quad-core series chips, which boosts overall server performance while drawing much less power.

"This is the largest increase in performance in the history of Xeon product line," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager, server platforms group at Intel.

HP and Dell said the chips double server performance while consuming 50 percent less power than their predecessors. Nehalem's microarchitecture design improves data throughput by cutting bottlenecks that plagued older chips.

The new servers reflect a trend of cutting data-center costs while delivering performance gains via faster chips and virtualization, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"These issues line up pretty well with enterprise customers' overriding concerns about the fragile economy and needing to quantify the economic value of the IT products they plan to buy," he said.

Chip improvements should allow servers to execute more tasks in virtualized environments, which should consolidate servers in smaller spaces in data centers. That could also help cut additional overhead costs per server, including energy and hardware acquisition costs.

Close to nine servers with Xeon processors can consolidate into one Nehalem-based quad-core Xeon server, Intel's Skaugen said. HP officials said that close to 24 single-core servers could be merged into one quad-core Xeon server.

Manufacturing company Emerson is looking to merge about 140 data centers into just a couple of centers by reducing the number of servers, said Stephen Hassell, vice president and chief information officer, during a Dell press conference last week. He said the company merged 18 old servers into one Nehalem-based Dell PowerEdge server, while reducing the server footprint by up to 50 percent.

The improved server performance comes partially from a faster pipe that allows chips to communicate faster with other processors, memory and system components. A crucial architectural change involves the integration of a memory controller on a CPU, which gives CPUs a faster communication channel with memory. The data-throughput improvements are bundled under a technology called QuickPath Interconnect, or QPI.

Dell already announced new PowerEdge 11g servers last week, but revealed specifications on Monday. The company's server lineup now includes five new blade, rack and tower PowerEdge servers based on Intel's Xeon 5500 series processors. The servers include the M610 and M710 blade servers, the R710 and R610 rack servers and the T610 tower server. The servers are priced starting at US$1,599 and are available worldwide starting Monday.

HP said Monday's roll-out of 10 new ProLiant G6 low-end and midrange servers was its biggest ever in the company's history. The lineup includes three blade servers, five rack servers and two tower servers. The systems will be available on Monday starting at $1,000. The systems include a number of enhancements that could see cut energy costs.

A power management technology offered by HP can cap power consumption by a set of servers. Another unique feature is the inclusion of 32 sensors in each server that can track and dynamically reduce server power consumption. Sensors measure thermal activity of components like fans, and algorithms use the data to adjust operation of the components to cool systems more efficiently.

IBM on Monday introduced four new Nehalem-based rack servers and blades feature unique designs that can slash energy costs up to 50 percent, according to the company. The offerings include the IBM BladeCenter HS22 blade server, System x3650 M2 and System x3550 M2 rack servers. IBM is also launching the System x iDataPlex dx360 M2, which is designed for data centers, and provides up to five times the compute density versus traditional 1U rack servers while cooling systems more efficiently, according to the company.

Software tools are also being offered with the servers to cut energy and system maintenance costs. Dell and IBM are offering software, called the Dell Management Console and Systems Director 6.1, respectively, making it easier for enterprises to manage hardware, software and networking resources across virtualized environments. HP is offering tools to manage power consumption by groups of servers, and tools to manage operations spread over virtual machines in a virtualized server environment.

HP and Dell are also plugging system management and diagnostic tools directly into the hardware. That will ease fixing and updating systems, and delivery of software like product updates on a timely basis, the vendors said. Servers usually ship with installation CDs, but the software will now go on a chip instead and save users from fumbling around to find the right installation discs.

Server makers will continue to see improved processor performance as Intel battles rival Advanced Micro Devices for server chip market share. AMD is due to ship its 6-core Istanbul chips later this year, while Intel will ship 8-core Nehalem-EX processors later this year or early 2010.

Intel May Not Ship Nehalem EX Until Early 2010

Intel may not release its upcoming Nehalem EX line of Xeon chips for servers that have four or more processors until early next year, an Intel executive said.

"What you'll get at the beginning of next year -- late this year or the beginning of next year -- will be the push into the four-socket, eight-socket and above space," said Shannon Poulin, Xeon platform director in Intel's Server Products Group, discussing the Nehalem EX release schedule during an interview.

Nehalem EX is Intel's next-generation line of x86 server chips designed for servers with four or more processors. They are expected to have up to eight cores on a single chip, in addition to an on-chip memory controller and support for Intel's QuickPath Interconnect technology, which greatly increases memory bandwidth.

On Intel's product roadmap, the Nehalem EX processors follow the Nehalem EP chips, released Tuesday, which are designed for servers and workstations that use one or two processors. The EP variants have up to four cores on a single processor.

Intel executives have not given a firm release date for Nehalem EX, but they have previously said the chip would likely be released during the second half of this year. In recent years, Intel updated its high-end server chips in September, suggesting the same might happen this year. For example, last year Intel released its six-core Dunnington processors in September

With the chips now set to hit the market later than September, this suggests a slower product release cycle than in recent years. But Poulin said putting the Nehalem EX chips on the market at the beginning of 2010 doesn't mean they're coming late.

"Generally we see a lag between the 2-socket and 4-socket and above [chips] ... a historic low was seven to eight months and a historic high is probably a year and a half or so," Poulin said. "This one kind of falls right in the middle."

Intel's Nehalem EP Server Chips Hit the Market

Details of the new Xeon 3500 and Xeon 5500 processors -- formerly known by the Nehalem EP code name -- were first announced nearly four weeks ago when Apple updated its line of Mac Pro computers, and other vendors soon followed with details of their own systems based on the new chips.

The 17 new Xeon chips that make up the Nehalem EP family are now available in systems, including workstations and blade servers, and Intel has high hopes for them, despite a general slowdown in IT spending and Intel's own lack of visibility into market demand.

"We expect this to be one of the broadest roll outs of new technologies and a new platform, and hopefully a nice kick for the economy for people who have been waiting to buy new servers," said Shannon Poulin, Xeon platform director in Intel's Server Products Group, during an interview.

Poulin said Intel shipped "hundreds of thousands" of Nehalem EP chips to server makers in advance of the launch.

The Xeon 5500 line ranges in price from US$188 to $1,600, in 1,000 unit quantities. The 3500 chips are priced between $284 and $999, while the L5518 and L5508 embedded versions cost $530 and $423, respectively.

Intel is pitching the new chips as the most significant revamp of its server chip line since the 1995 release of the Pentium Pro.

The Xeon 5500 and Xeon 3500 are the first server versions of Intel's Nehalem chip family and include technical enhancements that greatly increase their performance relative to previous generations of the Xeon. Most importantly, the processors have an on-chip memory controller and use Intel's QuickPath Interconnect technology instead of a front-side bus to triple the memory bandwidth available to the processors.

The new chips also have a feature, called Turbo Boost, that can overclock one or more cores on the chip to deal with a heavier processing load. The server versions of the chips are rated to run at speeds up to 2.93GHz, but Turbo Boost can temporarily raise this to 3.3GHz under certain conditions. The workstation chips get a similar boost from 3.2GHz to 3.46GHz.

In high-performance computing applications, the new Xeon 5500 chips will allow server makers to build systems capable of more than 1 quadrillion, or 1,000 trillion, floating operations per second, Intel said.

Intel is counting on the higher performance and low power consumption to spur corporate sales, but executives admit the company has little insight into future market demand.

Looking ahead, future versions of the Nehalem EP chip called Westmere are due next year. These chips will be made with Intel's upcoming 32-nanometer manufacturing process and will be socket-compatible with the Nehalem EP, reducing the cost for system makers to design servers that use the chip and allowing end users to easily upgrade.

Intel Boosts Speed of Low-power Processors

Intel is expected to refresh its line of laptop chips Monday with new ultra-low-voltage processors that should make ultraportable laptops operate faster without sacrificing battery life.
Intel currently offers ultra-low-voltage processors for fully functional thin and light laptops, such as Apple's expensive MacBook Air and Lenovo's ThinkPad X300. These chips fit into small spaces and draw less power than conventional laptop chips. The chips are about the size of a dime, or 60 percent smaller than mainstream laptop chips.
Laptops with the new chips should boost the speed of applications while drawing the same power as with the earlier chips. The chips will run at clock speeds of up to 1.6GHz, a speed bump from earlier chips that ran at up to 1.40GHz. Depending on the applications, existing ultraportable laptops with ULV chips run from anywhere between four to seven hours.
"There should be no difference to battery life with these speed bumps," said a source familiar with Intel's plans.
The chips will be available on Monday, according to the source. They will be a part of Intel's Montevina mobile platform, which bundles mobile laptop chips and wireless capabilities into laptops.
The refresh comes ahead of Intel's planned release of new ultra-low-voltage processors for inexpensive laptops, which are due in the second quarter as part of the updated Montevina Plus platform.
The new chips include the dual-core Intel Core 2 Duo SU9600 chip, which will run at 1.60GHz, include 3MB of cache and draw 10 watts of power, according to an Intel document seen by IDG News Service. It will be priced at US$289 for 1,000 units. The single-core Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 chip will run at 1.40GHz, with 3MB of cache. It will be priced at $262.
Intel is also releasing faster low-voltage (LV) processors as part of the laptop chip refresh. The Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600 dual-core chip will run at 2.53GHz, an improvement from previous LV chips that ran at up to 2.40GHz speed, according to the document. The chip will include 6MB of cache, draw 25 watts of power and be priced at $316.
Also being launched is the SL9600 Intel Core 2 Duo, which will run at 2.13GHz, include 6MB of cache and draw 17 watts of power. It will be priced at $316, according to the document.

AMD Phenom 2 Processor

AMD had to overcome a few hiccups in the initial Phenom launch and revisit its pricing to stay competitive with Intel in the Core 2 era, but AMD's back in the game with the new Phenom II processor. It's not exactly a knockout blow, but the Phenom II X4 has the right price and enough performance to do some damage.

This year AMD will ship two new quad-core Phenom II X4 processors, the 940 Black Edition and the 920, clocked at 3.0GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively. Black Edition processors come with an unlocked multiplier setting to make overclocking easier for PC enthusiasts. The processors differ only in clock speed, and have identical specifications otherwise. The Phenom II X4 processors will come with 64K of L1 instruction and 64K of L1 data cache per core (512KB total L1 per processor), and 512KB of L2 data cache per core (2MB total L2 per processor). The processors will also have a shared 6MB L3 cache and will feature an onboard DDR2 memory controller with 17.1 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

Built on a 45nm manufacturing process, the processors will have a relatively cool maximum thermal-dissipation value of 125 watts. Cool 'n' Quiet 3.0, AMD's power-management solution, keeps the Phenom II X4 chilly during periods of inactivity. AMD states that the CPU will now use 50 percent less energy while idle in comparison to Cool 'n' Quiet 2.0.

In a move sure to make existing Phenom owners happy, Phenom II X4 processors will be backward compatible with existing AM2+ motherboards. Motherboard manufacturers will release BIOS updates to ensure compatibility. As a follow-up in early 2009, AMD will release AM3 socket-based Phenom II X4 and X3 processors. Both will also be backward compatible with current AM2+ motherboards and will support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory.

AMD also bundles the Fusion and Overdrive utilities with the processors. Fusion helps to improve gaming performance by disabling scores of Windows services and slightly overclocking the entire system. AMD's Overdrive utility helps to automatically overclock the system and lets users apply those settings on an application-specific level. Overdrive helped bumped our Black Edition up to a final speed of 3333MHz when we tried it out.

The new Phenom II X4 processors will be available immediately in quantity. Expect to find the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition retailing for $275, and the Phenom II X4 920 at $235.

From the pricing angle, the best direct competitor to the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition is Intel's 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q9400, a quad-core processor with 6MB of L2 cache. Intel's Core i7 920 sits at a similar price point, but the total cost of ownership is much higher for the i7 after you factor in the cost of the motherboard and memory. The i7 processor requires DDR3 memory and a motherboard with an LGA 1366 socket. DDR3 memory costs roughly twice as much as DDR2. AM2+-based motherboards start in the $50 range and cap off at $200, whereas LGA socket 1366 boards start at $200 and can run as high as $400.

We didn't have Intel's 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q9400 processor on hand for our comparison. Instead, we clocked our Core 2 Extreme QX6800 with 8MB of L2 cache down to 2.66GHz and put it up against the Phenom II X4 940 to see how the chips stack up.

How does the Microprocessor work?

Assume that a program and data are already entered in the R/W memory. The program includes binary instructions to add given data and to display the answer at the seven-segment LEDs. When the microprocessor is given a command to execute the program, it reads and executes one instruction at a time and finally sends the result to the seven-segment LEDs for display.


This process of program execution can best be described by comparing it to the process of assembling a radio kit. The instructions for assembling the radio are printed in a sequence on a sheet of paper. One reads the first instruction, then picks up the necessary components of the radio and performs the task. The sequence of the process is read, interpret, and perform. The microprocessor works the same way.


The instructions are stored sequentially in the memory. The microprocessor fetches the first instruction from its memory sheet, decodes it, and executes that instruction. The sequence of fetching, decoding and executing continues until the microprocessor comes across an instruction to stop.


During the entire process, the microprocessor uses the system bus to fetch the binary instructions and data from the memory. It uses registers from the register section to store data temporarily, and it performs the computing function in the ALU section. Finally, it sends out the result in binary, using the same bus lines, to the seven-segment LEDs.