X-bit labs

Annual Hardware Overview: A Glance Back at the Year 2003 (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 01/08/2004 | 11:51 PM ]

There are some unpleasant moments about the new AMD processors, though. First of all, there is a confusion with the sockets (the Socket754 for the Athlon XP and the Socket940 for the Athlon 64-FX), and the Athlon 64-FX is in fact the Opteron 1xx with another marking. This kind of a disorder has never been considered an advantage. Even if we take the “pure” Athlon 64, there are questions concerning the future development of the series. In fact it had been planned keeping in mind the upcoming release of the 90nm production technology in the end of 2003. As the technology hasn’t yet been finalized, the processor was rated as 3200+ rather than 3400+, and there are grave doubts about the remaining frequency reserve of the 130nm core and further core frequency growth.

In 2003 AMD looked more advantageous in the server processor field (that was downright strange and weird). Still, this is an undeniable fact: Opteron practically met its schedule and the manufacturers welcomed it warmly. Among them are IBM, which is now AMD’s partner, and Tyan, which is not a minor player in the server and workstations market. This market is a good playground for the Opteron with its 64-bit architecture. With the added support of eight-processor systems, AMD processors look very attractive from all points of view compared to Intel Xeon.

So, Sun has already announced its intention to use Opteron in its x86 servers and will port Solaris for the x86-64 platform, while cluster manufacturers are complementing the list of the world’s highest-performing machines with systems based on Opteron. The unanimous acceptance brings money in: having launched Opteron x48 in the end of the year, AMD priced the series from $733 for the 148 model to $3199 for Opteron 848.

Meanwhile, Intel has no ready ersponse. The Xeon is basically not 64-bit. And the traditional solution of price reductions (by one third in July) pushed AMD to do the same with its Opteron. Intel also boosts the size of the L3 cache; it is now 3MB in the two-way Xeon DP. The Itanium is a specific and narrow market due to its unique architecture. This explains why the Opteron sales soon volumes after its release grew much higher than those of Itanium.

At the same time, it is the Itanium 2 family that’s going to resist the onslaught of the Opteron (that is, if Intel doesn’t come up with their own 64-bit x86 processors, as rumors suggested). The family was developing quite nicely during the last year, with the release of 130nm processors on the Madison core (a 0.13-micron version of the McKinley) and the Deerfield (a “light” version of the Madison). The latter is really very light: 1GHz Itanium 2 LV with 1.5MB L3 cache requires only 62W of power and comes at an official price of $744. Who said the Itanium means bulky and pricey?