ARGOMENTO:

www.top500.org/blog/.../01/about_races_returns_and_rendimientos

About Races, Returns and Rendimientos
Mon, 2010-03-01 18:58 |


They are not even official yet: the new server processors Nehalem-EX from Intel and Magny-Cours from AMD. Nonetheless, the competition between the four-cylinder Formula One racers is already in full swing. They are even up for order at English and Canadian webshops.



While there are still no official performance specifications for the Nehalem-EX, various numbers have been circulating the internet for quite a while now; like the ones on the Spanish Bull website (no, not the Osborne bull, but the bull of the French company).

The diagrams also show the Westmere-EP processors X56XX, the new 6-core processors with 32-nm technology that are also waiting to start from the pole position shortly after the end of CeBIT. They will also be launched under the codename Gulftown, as single-core processors for the league of the touring cars - the superior desktop-PCs.
Racing Season 2010

Shortly after the start of the Formula One racing season (Mid-March in Bahrain) AMD intents to enter the race with its 8- and 12-core Magny-Cours (Opteron 6000); although the formerly traditional Formula One location Magny-Cours has meanwhile backed out of the much too expansive Formula One circus. Regardless, AMD’s logo will probably still decorate the rear spoilers of the Ferrari racers during this season and maybe also later on. It’s just possible that Mubadala from Abu Dhabi, Ferrari’s new major sponsor and AMD’s savior, has greased the skids a bit. And so the next AMD chip could very well be named Yas Marina Circuit – after the name of the racing circuit in Abu Dhabi, which will be this year’s location for the season’s final Formula One race.

The first Opteron 61xx processors (7700 dollars for the quadripartite set) and servers, like the Tyan server (Opteron 6174) for 25 000 U.S. dollars, are already being sold on eBay. According to manager John Fruehe, AMD has been delivering the chip for the G34 socket (with 1944 pads) to the server manufacturers since the end of January. The internet’s price comparison sites reveal three Magny-Cours versions so far, the Opteron 6168 (1.9GHz), 6172 (2.1GHz) and 6174 (2.2GHz). They all have 12 cores and a “TDP” of 115 watts – although the latter might refer to the AMD-specific Average CPU Power (ACP). The processors can already be ordered at British webshops, starting at around 595 pounds (about 905 U.S. dollars). Also available are 8-core processors from the Opteron 6100 series; according to the comparison sites these are: Opteron 6128 (1.5GHz), 6134 (1.7GHz) and 6136 (2.4GHz).





Opteron 6174 G34 (Magny-Cours) on eBay for 25 000 dollars.

The performance of the Opteron 6174 should be somewhere near to 430 SPECint/fp_2006 in 4-socket systems. That’s not enough to compete with the top products of the Nehalem-EX family; the Xeon X7560 with 2.26GHz should – according to the “Expectativas” – get more than 600 in a 4-socket system. However, a lot can still be done through pricing to get the AMD server sector, which has been down on its knees since the Barcelona disaster, going again. With a comparatively cheap 1030 euros (about 1400 U.S. dollars) – the current online price – the Opteron 6136 only costs one third of what the noble Xeon X7560 (2.26GHz, 24MB L3, 130 watts TDP) is sold for at Canadian webshops, 4407.89 Canadian dollars (about 4191 U.S. dollars).
Driver Change

Not only the processor but also the personnel carousel is turning at AMD. The Canadian Ian McNaughton, who had come to AMD from ATI and was then promoted to marketing manager, has suddenly and unexpectedly left the company – his reasons and plans as yet unknown. Taking into account that the company’s ATI-rooted graphics sector is doing much better than its stricken server department, that’s a surprising development indeed. It’s sure helpful to be the only one selling DirectX 11 cards.



On the internet, there are lots of places that show “expected” performance values for the Westmere-EP (X56XX) and the Nehalem-EX 6500 and 7500 families (image taken from the Spanish Bull website).

Competitor Nvidia will probably still need some time to catch up. The Californian Company hopes to be able to make the first Fermi graphics cards available to testers near the end of this quarter. However, another month or two will probably pass by before mass production can set in. The not-so-very-accurate internet rumor mill still reports serious design problems as well as manufacturing difficulties concerning the currently by far largest chip with 3 billion transistors. With A3 step it’s still in a relatively early state, though. Some Intel processors, for instance, don’t hit the market before reaching E step. Anyway, one can also generate sales by selling old DirectX 10 cards, mobile graphics chips and chipsets: Nvidia’s turnover increased to 983 million U.S. dollars in the last quarter – twice as much as in the year-ago quarter. And so, Nvidia was able to make a profit again, 131 million U.S. dollars. Regarding the whole financial year 2010, however, the total amount is 68 million – in red ink. The only hope is that Nvidia makes a comeback with the Fermi chips soon because AMD/ATI without competition is just as bad as Intel with an x86 processor monopoly.