Server vendors adopt AMD's 16-core chips

Server vendors on Monday came out in support of AMD's latest Opteron 6200 server chips, which advance chip technology to new highs with 16 processor cores, PCWorld says.

Top server makers, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM are refreshing server lines with the new Opteron chips, which include between four and 16 cores. Code-named Interlagos, the new chips are 25% to 30% faster than their predecessors, the 12-core Opteron 6100 chips.

Some older server operating systems will encounter problems on the 6200 series, ars technica reports. AMD server product marketing manager Michael Detwiler said the 6200 has been tested as compatible with Windows Server 2003 Release 2 service pack 3 and after. Any Linux based on the 2.6.31 kernel or earlier also fails - including older versions of VMware ESX. Detwiler said that older Windows and Linux versions could still be run as virtualised operating systems on the platform.

The first official benchmarks for the 6200 give it an edge in other departments as well. In a set of Spec benchmarks released on Hewlett-Packard server platforms, done head-to-head with similarly configured Xeon systems, a dual configuration of the 2.56 Opteron 6282 SE turned in peak integer rates about 60% higher than those of a dual 2.4Ghz Xeon E5645.

Analysts appear to be giving AMD a shot, CNET notes. Phase one of AMD's server plan revolves around pricing to garner more share. Phase two revolves around the cloud computing data centre focus.

Evercore analyst Patrick Wang said in a research note that AMD cut prices up to 50% ahead of Monday's Opteron launch.