IBM Opts for AMD 195
ExE122 writes "Since the unveiling of the low-cost, low-energy AMD Operton in 2003, Intel has been struggling in the server-grade processor insdustry. Now, IBM has announced their decision to use the AMD Opteron processor in their new line of BladeCenter servers. System x3455, x3655 and x3755 rack-mount servers, two-way Bladecenter LS21, and four-way LS41 blade servers sporting the new AMD processors have already been announced. IBM will continue this transition over the next three months.
From the article:
"IBM's choice is by all means an important victory over rival Intel, which is struggling to sell the remaining deposit of server processors before the general acceptance of Woodcrest X5100 chips. Unfortunately for Intel, at the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro had 26 per cent of the market for servers built on personal computer chips, more than double its share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research."
Could this be lights out for Intel?"
From the article:
"IBM's choice is by all means an important victory over rival Intel, which is struggling to sell the remaining deposit of server processors before the general acceptance of Woodcrest X5100 chips. Unfortunately for Intel, at the end of the second quarter, Advanced Micro had 26 per cent of the market for servers built on personal computer chips, more than double its share a year earlier, according to Mercury Research."
Could this be lights out for Intel?"
Flame war in the making? (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel is going nowhere, however - there are far too many consumer-oriented PC corps out there that adore Intel. And sheesh, AMD has been on the short end for so long, it's hard to imagine that a corp like Intel couldn't wait it out, too.
That's an easy one. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. No it could not.
Lights out for Intel? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an AMD supporter, but the near future is them trying to hold the ground they've recently taken, not expanding further.
(And Intel probably the reserves to stuff up again, be uncompetitive for a few years, and still make a comeback with the next generation of chips.)
Lights out for PPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better question: Is this lights out for the Power line?
IBM seems to be giving up on their Power cores. That's what concerns me, because it looked like they had a big shot of gaining territory in the gaming-and-entertainment market.
"Could this be lights out for Intel?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, quit it with the retarded questions at the end of the article summaries.
--
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End of intel as likely as end of IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me intel will gain back some lost market share with the Core 2 Duo.
It's ridiculous to add the "end of intel" comment to the end of the article.
Re:Odd.... (Score:2, Insightful)
When has Dell *not* been on board the Intel Train?
Re:Lights out for PPC? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gaming territory is almost invaded by PowerPC RISC chips. Even XBox 360 uses sort of PowerPC and Cell processor in PS3 is also PowerPC.
The chips used in servers are from same standard (PowerPC) and shares some stuff but completely different. We are speaking about some monsters here.
Can check here for more info http://www-03.ibm.com/chips/power/index.html [ibm.com]
Those things shows my Quad G5 as a toy
"Power" is sort of standard in fact, check http://www.power.org/ [power.org] , it is very alive and well. In fact, it looks like taking over the World.
Re:End of intel as likely as end of IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
without HyperTransport, AMD would be dead (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at some [anandtech.com] benchmarks [anandtech.com]. The new 5100 series Xeons with the Woodcrest core have been out since June, and a dual Woodcrests crush dual Opterons in almost every test. AMD's only hope at the moment is HyperTransport, with which they rule the market for 4-socket servers (Intel's old-fashioned FSB doesn't really scale to 4 sockets). But thanks to Core2 (Conroe and Woodcrest), Intel has taken over the 1-socket and 2-socket market. Prepare to see AMD's market share take a nosedive.
I am generally an AMD fanboy, but my next system will use Intel chips. Now that Core2 is here, I am simply not interested in an antiquated AMD chip which can only complete an SSE2 operation once every two cycles. Until the K8L comes out, it's Intel Inside for me.
Re:Lights out for PPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
The next Power processor will be the Power6 [wikipedia.org], and is supposed to come out next year. It's still be dual core, but meant to run at 4-5GHz. They also continue with PowerPC products [tradingmarkets.com], even without Apple.
DOOM AND GLOOM (Score:2, Insightful)
Do the editors really think that adding stupid little phrases like this to every article enhance the experience? Why do we need to read this every time that something happens that gives an avatage to Intel or AMD? Sheesh, give us a break.
Minnesota twins batters hit 2 home runs in yesterdays game. Could this spell apocalptic doom and drawn out painful deaths for the New York Yankees?
I hope it's not the end for Intel (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD manufacture costs (Score:3, Insightful)
A current AM2 K8 dual core with 512k+512k cache is similar in size to Conroe with a 15% (roughly) disadvantage in performance (at common price brackets). Moving to 65nm will drastically reduce die sizes, allowing AMD to squeeze more chips on each silicon wafer, even compared to Conroe.
Consequently, AMD will be able to sell their chips to us at really cheap prices while still making a good profit, building a war-chest for when K8L faces off against CxQ. Then we repeat the whole process again when Intel moves to 45nm.
I think having a 4m L2 cache might be a bit of a boat anchor around Intel's neck when it comes to manufacturing. Time will tell.
Re:Flame war in the making? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:without HyperTransport, AMD would be dead (Score:4, Insightful)
- Comparing FB-DIMM to DDR. FB-DIMM has something like 4x the bandwidth, and isn't even available outside Intel OEM samples. AMD is moving to DDR2 real soon. Comparing pre-production Intel parts to half-year-old AMD parts isn't benchmarking. It's PR.
- The benchmark list is mostly home-brewed. A hacked-together transaction processor (when there are industry standard ones out there for comparison - TPC numbers would be ideal), and RSA crypto optimized for the Intel processor.
- Their SAMP benchmark and portgresSQL benchmark are worthless (they dropped to single-socket for them). The only common ones on the list are specInt and specFP - both single-processor benchmarks that don't show scalability.
- The second link is a well-known example of Anand running a benchmark and discovering severe performance problems (i.e. mysql scales very poorly with more Opteron processors due to a mysql bug) - then still proclaiming Intel's huge victory.
Woodcrest is faster in single processor configurations. Duh - it's a preproduction model compared to AMD's 3-year-old design. These benchmarks ultimately say NOTHING about multiprocessor configurations - I have yet to see any useful 2-socket benchmarks.Re:That's an easy one. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:AMD manufacture costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, Intel will have the same challenge when CSI is supposed to be on line in the higher-end models in 2008. Also, it will be interesting to see how well the 65nm to 45nm transition goes for Intel.
But, Intel has a real advantage in that it has a great new architecture to improve on. While there is lots of talk and wonder about the next new architecture from AMD, Intel doesn't have to wait for AMD to catch up.
All in all, I think Intel will lose some ground on the high-end server space for this year and next, but I think Intel will maintain it's share in the lower-end space and may gain in the enthusiast market, as the new Core 2 models look extremely strong, and I don't think 4x4 will really impact that as much as AMD would like.
One thing is for sure. We need Intel and AMD; we benefit from the competition. I remember how great it was to have a Dual Xeon workstation at work in 2002, and how expensive it was. Now, I can more power at home for much, much less.
Re:Apple Curse? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because windows supports both AMD and Intel architechtures in windows. They may both be x86 but all the enchancements they've done for optimizations are really different - like multimedia instructions, pipelining stuff are probably all different. So there is probably a little bit more involved in supporting AMD CPUs.
Whatever happened to the Cell? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have though that this would at least muddy the waters a bit with the whole Intel vs AMD war on IBM servers.
Re:That's an easy one. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then when Intel comes out with better technology after all those years, suddenly before the hardware is even released the whole world has seemingly swung back to Intel in the space of a few days.
The marketing guys at AMD must be wondering just what it takes to overcome the massive gravity of Intels mindshare.
could this be lights out for slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
this is a design win for AMD, yes. and an important one at that. but this is a far cry from lights out for intel. jeezz.
Re:That's an easy one. (Score:3, Insightful)
This criticism, however, applies just as much to the average Slashdot participant.
|>oug
Re:That's an easy one. (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps you don't understand this whole finance thing very well?