AMD to drop clock speed in 12-core chips

[gareth170]

Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming 12-core chips will draw the same power as existing six-core chips, but will have reduced clock speeds, a company official said Monday.

The company's upcoming 12-core server chips, code-named Magny-Cours, put two six-core chips in one package. The same silicon is used in existing six-core chips, code-named Istanbul, which are part of the Opteron line of server processors. AMD designed Magny-Cours chips to draw the same power as Istanbul chips, said Pat Conway, a member of AMD's technical staff, in a presentation at the Hot Chips conference at Stanford University.

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Responding to an audience question about how Magny-Cours, with two chips, will use the same power as one Istanbul chip, Conway said that AMD is reducing the clock speeds of the Magny-Cours and added that power management features are being added.

However, Conway declined to comment on potential clock speeds of 12-core chips in response to a question. "That's a detail we're going to save for the product launch," Conway said. The chips are aimed at servers and are due out in the first quarter of 2010.

Chipmakers like Intel and AMD reverted to adding cores to boost chip performance earlier in the decade, as cranking up clock speed led to excessive heat dissipation and power consumption.

Even though the clock frequencies will fall, Magny-Cours chips will pack more performance compared to existing Opteron chips, Conway said. The larger cache and increased cores will make servers faster, Conway said. For example, a server will be able to execute tasks faster in virtualized environments with a larger number of cores, enabling servers to host a larger number of virtual machines.

Conway also talked about finer details in the Magny-Cours chip. Two six-core chips are connected by four hyperthreaded interconnects and are targeted at two- and four-socket servers, Conway said. It includes a total of 12MB of L3 cache, with each core supporting 512KB of L2 cache. The chips will be manufactured by AMD's spinoff, GlobalFoundries, using existing 45-nanometer technology.

AMD is also working on a new x86 chip architecture code-named Bulldozer. The architecture will be used in chips manufactured using the 32-nm process in 2011. The company has scheduled a 16-core chip code-named Interlagos for release in 2011.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/hardware...n-12-core-chips-827?source=rss_infoworld_news

 

[theforce]

Sounds like promising news if more developers decide their programs to utilize so many cores.

 

[Tolmekian]

I feel like the quad core i5 setup im waiting for is such a baby now

And 16 core by 2011, great news.

 

[BIGBC]

This isnt going to be needed in anything other than servers for a long time yet, and the lower clock speeds will be pretty damaging for mainstream use.

 

[anti5580]

I didn't even think that many software utilise quad core let along 12. Starting to think that they're just releasing these CPU as bragging rights.

 

[Yrkoon]

aww and i thought my quad was overkill, now it looks like a noob

 

[Monkeynut]

aww and i thought my quad was overkill, now it looks like a noob

I have Socket 939, how'd you think I feel?

 

[Yrkoon]

I have Socket 939, how'd you think I feel?

the same i felt a few weeks ago i guess i had 1 gig ddr 400 a x1950pro 256mb and a 3700 a64

 

[Big.Wayne]

This isnt going to be needed in anything other than servers for a long time yet

Now I know a tiny bit more about Virtualization technologies I can see how these 12-Core machines are a good thing, you could shrink a server room from a dozen PC's to maybe one or two, each machine running half a dozen seperate operating systems and supporting a large amount of users etc.

I suppose in the future with a bit more work on O/S and application support the normal computer enthusiast will be able to take advantage of so many cores, I also reckon there are a few dozen OcUK forum members that will just buy it for fun!

 

[m3csl2004]

the same i felt a few weeks ago i guess i had 1 gig ddr 400 a x1950pro 256mb and a 3700 a64

That is exactly what I'm running now. I don't any extra power.

 

[paulselhi]

I for one would love a 16 core. I do a lot of 3D work and 3D apps such as MAX and Cinema 4D can take as many cores as you throw at them

 

[Mattus]

Now I know a tiny bit more about Virtualization technologies I can see how these 12-Core machines are a good thing, you could shrink a server room from a dozen PC's to maybe one or two, each machine running half a dozen seperate operating systems and supporting a large amount of users etc.

Exactly. A 12-core chip is useless for most desktop use, where higher clock speed is still important. This is all about virtualisation - companies can consolidate jobs that would previously have been performed by several servers onto one.

 

[PermaBanned]

This isnt going to be needed in anything other than servers for a long time yet, and the lower clock speeds will be pretty damaging for mainstream use.

Depends, i thought they were trying to implement single thread for multiple cores for Bulldozer and probably beyond.

 

[Aod]

Exactly. A 12-core chip is useless for most desktop use, where higher clock speed is still important. This is all about virtualisation - companies can consolidate jobs that would previously have been performed by several servers onto one.

just wait until common software is multithreaded - it'll happen soon now that almost all new computers come with dual-core processors.

 

[DavyBoy]

Seen someone benching one of these elsewhere, the default clocks on their sample was just under 1.7GHz, however he was able to clock it right up to 3.1GHz.

He was actually benching a system that had 2 of these chips installed.

Here is a screen of it O/Ced to 3.1GHz, also CPUZ information has been sorted out as well.

source

 

[Arthalen]

Im positively drooling. A 4 socket server with these could virtualise 25% the servers in my company.

 

[Corasik]

More cores is also great for web servers, application servers and database servers etc, for as long as the disks/raids can keep up with the data requirements, more threads can be launched thus serving an ever increasing number of threads, while improving power efficiency massively.

Users want more and more performance, but server owners want to reduce cost of ownership (lower power bills) while still delivering good performance to many concurrent users.

Sun's Coolthreads processor (niagra) can already handle 64 concurrent threads on a single multicore processor.

 

[alexthecheese]

Very cool. Must say I am loving the thought of dozens of cores in the future.

 

[.walls]

Im positively drooling. A 4 socket server with these could virtualise 25% the servers in my company.

Assuming you've done straight math (i.e. 4*12=48 procs), you'll find that you can actually get a lot more than that on the same box, depending on what you're virtualising. Some of our very old servers (Dell 6850s with 4x single core netburst Xeons) host maybe twelve plus guests and they run very happily... some of our bigger boxes (R900s) can host 50 or more...

 

[deusexlumina]

12 cores at 3ghz...incredible. AMD are really upping their game now