AMD takes on Atom S server chips with 'Kyoto' Opteron Xs

Given its full name, Advanced Micro Devices should be dominating in microservers, those densely packed, wimpy-cored machines that are good for all kinds of data center jobs. And with the launch of its "Kyoto" Opteron X processors, AMD is hoping to get the jump on Intel and its Atom S1200 Series chips, also aimed at microservers …

[Nate Amsden]

sad

I have been half hoping AMD would get their shit together on the higher end Opteron (where's my 16 core 3.5Ghz(raw speed w/o turbo boost) 115W chip) front but I guess they fell too far behind by neglecting their R&D over recent years and feel they can't catch up again.

Sad to see. Myself I don't care about APUs or embedded, or micro servers, so I suppose my next servers will be some variant of Intel. I preferred AMD's approach of more "real" cores even if each core was clocked at a lower rate. Never was a fan of hyperthreading even after intel "fixed" it a few years ago(Xeon 5500s I believe? or was it 5600)

I am not sure what makes AMD think they will be able to compete in the ARM server market with the likes of Samsung, and perhaps even Qualcomm moving such massive quantities of chips. Maybe Seamicro will give them an edge in that area...don't know.

sigh

[Nate Amsden]

Re: sad

shows how up to date I stay on this stuff, was just doing some searches and saw that AMD canceled it's higher end Opterons (10 and 20 core) last year. For some reason I missed that announcement.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: sad

The server market is moving down market with only IBM and Sun still producing chips and servers with real oomph and everyone else fighting for volume as margins fall. There is little or no room for low volume specialist server designs which is why Cray, SGI et al went to the wall.

Compilers and OSes are supposed to pick up the slack so that you can buy a "cheap" box crammed full of chips and it will deliver the power you need. Well, that's the theory and why the comparison with Nvidia's Kepler.

AMD know that ARM is coming and has already licensed it. Being able to offer x86, ARM (presumably merged) and GPU on a single die might yet prove a very smart move.

[Alan Brown]

oomph is relative

The performance and power consumption of even the modest chippery puts any 6-7 year old CPU system to shame.

If AMD really is working on a multicore chimera (ie, gpu+arm+x86) then losing the extra x86 cores might make sense if they can be supplanted by a shedload of ARMs - AS LONG AS THE OS/SOFTWARE MAKES USE OF THEM (emphasis mine).

I'm surprised AMD hasn't started pushing SoC-ish x86 designs for desktop use. The thermal side of things is low enough tthat it's feasible.

[Tim Parker]

@Alan Brown Re: oomph is relative

"The performance and power consumption of even the modest chippery puts any 6-7 year old CPU system to shame."

Precisely. I realise that Andrew Feldman is promoting his own wares, and is also coming from a server perspective, but the statement

"The interesting thing is that a $9 CPU can't do anything"

has to be one of the stupidest bags of shite i've heard in the processor world for... oooooooo... hours maybe - and that's saying something.

[W. Anderson]

AMD still 'mentally' stuck to Microsoft

The statement from AMD "..."What is so great about the industry is that we got an ultrathin where the CPU costs $60 and the OS costs $60,...." indicates the same backward thinking displayed by AMD in 1990s in using and accepting "only" Microsoft server software in their reference platform and testing.

Fortunately Intel has moved on and relinquished the Wintel mentality for server considerations and actually test most of their newer Xeons and other Server chips on Linux "first" and more comprehensively before Windows. ARM were mercifully never in the throes of the Redmond 800 lbs gorilla.

AMD are still stuck kissing the butt of Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

$9 CPU can only play Angry Birds?

What a ridiculous statement that makes me want to ignore anything else this guy has to say.

As an app developer I've done some benchmarking between mobile ARM-based devices and x86... clock-for-clock an iPhone 4 was more or less on par with an original Atom for integer workloads. More recently, an iPhone 5 (~1.3ghz dual core) is almost as fast on a floating point workload as my 1.4ghz Core 2 Duo laptop.

Frankly I wouldn't be surprised at all if a top-end ARM core is as fast as one of these Jaguar cores for a lot of workloads... still admittedly pretty far behind Intel's top offerings... but AMD isn't really in a position to pick a performance fight with these recent ARM chips.

[BornToWin]

For those not paying attention...

These Jaguar based X-series processors are for MICROservers. The don't compete with Atom, they bury Atom. Why would anyone even consider Atom when they can have these far superior Jaguar based APUs for less than Intel charges for Atom? AMD has hit another homerun with Jaguar and the Steamroller cored power server processors will be better than Jaguar and shipping in late Q4 of '13.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: For those not paying attention...

What luck! We have our very own AMD PR person on the reg to ask questions!