Just in time for Earth Day, AMD is introducing its Opteron EE chip, intended for companies that have large, power-constrained data centers.
"The financial services customers we work with were among the major contributors of feedback that resulted in the development of this processor, especially New York City financial services customers who have limited power availability," Gina Longoria, senior product manager in the server and workstation division at AMD. "They really need to watch their power consumption, which makes power-efficient computing very important to them." She says many New York City customers are adding facilities staff as a part of their IT decision-making team because the need to stay within a power envelope has become so critical.
The quad-core Opteron EE chip draws an average of 40 watts of power. It runs at 2.1 and 2.3 GHz speeds and includes the virtualization and power management features of other Opteron chips, including Smart Fetch, Power Cap and CoolCore. Smart Fetch lets IT managers move data in inactive cores to L3 caches that draw less power. The Power Cap feature lets IT managers set limits on server processor power consumption based on known workload peaks and valleys.The CoolCore feature lets managers turn off the memory controller and L3 cache when they're not needed.
The new chip is capable of uniquely services colocation centers in many major U.S. markets, including:
Atlanta Colocation
Chicago Colocation
Los Angeles Colocation
New York Colocation
Independent consultant Neal Nelson says he recently ran a benchmark test pitting a server loaded with AMD Opteron HE processors against a server running Intel Xeon low-power chips. He says the AMD processors used 13 to 21 percent less power while delivering better throughput than Intel's. Presumably, the lower-wattage EE version of the Opteron would fare even better in such a test.
Longoria says all of AMD's OEM partners have expressed interest in this new processor. She expects the Opteron EE to used in custom solutions for large data centers.
