With the power constraints that South Africa is facing, Tyan AMD Opteron system boards can support a new feature designed to both increase power savings as well as boost performance for memory-intensive applications.
Dual Dynamic Power Management, often referred to as "split plane" by systemboard manufacturers, delivers new levels of performance and power savings by actually splitting the power planes between the processor cores and the integrated northbridge memory controller.
By splitting the power delivery between these two components, the processor is able to better manage the power consumption. When the processor is executing CPU-intensive commands that may not require as much memory bandwidth, the northbridge can throttle down the power consumption for more efficiency. In addition, the separate power planes allows the northbridge controller to be run at a higher frequency instead of being tied to the core frequency, allowing the memory to achieve lower latency for better performance.
Dual Dynamic Power Management (DDPM) is a feature that is supported only on the most recent generation of AMD Opteron processors - the native quad-core processors. In order to take advantage of this feature, a platform needs two things:
1) A quad-core AMD Opteron processor and
2) A systemboard that supports the splitting of the power planes
In order to ensure the greatest level of compatibility for platforms, Dual Dynamic Power Management is both forwards and backwards compatible. Installing an older dual-core AMD Opteron processor in a systemboard that supports DDPM will not present any compatibility issues, the platform should run fine. However, it will not be able to take advantage of the DDPM features. Likewise, installing a quad-core AMD Opteron processor into an older systemboard that doesn't support DDPM will not present a problem - the processor should run fine in the older board - but again, without the DDPM features.
The real magic happens when you install quad-core AMD Opteron processors into boards that support DDPM, allowing the platform to perform 3-10% better in memory-intensive applications and drawing less power.
Because of the backwards and forward compatibility, system builders can standardise on a system board and use it with either dual-core or quad-core AMD Opteron processors without having to maintain separate board inventory.
When choosing system boards for third generation AMD Opteron processors, remember that you will get the best benefit for your customers by choosing boards that support Dual Dynamic Power Management, especially the Tyan systems.
Share