Dell Speaks on AMD’s Quad-Core Opteron Performance

by Anton Shilov
09/05/2007 | 09:09 PM

Following a massive scandal that was caused by “simulated benchmarks” of Advanced Micro Devices quad-core microprocessors, Michael Dell, the founder and chief executive of Dell, the world’s second biggest supplier of personal computers (PCs), said that AMD’s code-named Barcelona chip does have potential and can be considerably faster its rival from Intel Corp.

“If you look at floating point instructions, Barcelona is about 30% faster than Clovertown. However, if you look at integer instructions, Clovertown is about 30% faster than Barcelona,” said Michael Dell at Annual Citigroup Technology Conference, reports EETimes web-site.

In Summer AMD released benchmark results of its quad-core AMD Opteron processors running at clock-speeds that by far exceed those that are projected to be available at launch next week. Some media outlets and bloggers complained that AMD used outdated Intel Xeon processors and their benchmark numbers for comparison. But while the complains were correct when it comes to integer performance, AMD’s benchmark numbers appeared to be accurate in case of floating point performance, at least, according to Michael Dell.

The chief executive of Dell reiterated plans to offer solutions based on both AMD’s and Intel’s microprocessors, claiming that different platforms may offer different benefits that may, or may not be valuable for certain customers.

“Depending on the type of application you are running or even your theory of computer science, you might have a preference for one type of server or another,” claimed Michael Dell.

Considering the sizes of Dell, the company admitted, it would be unacceptable to have only one supplier of microprocessors. Therefore, going forward the company will continue to build and sell systems powered by various chips.

“It is simply unacceptable for a company of Dell's size to only have one of these choices. We think having two suppliers is absolutely in our best interest,” Mr. Dell added.

Quad-core AMD Opteron processors code-named Barcelona are based on the company’s next-generation micro-architecture and will be produced using 65nm process technology. Among the highlights of AMD’s new chips the manufacturer lists shared 2MB L3 cache, 128-bit floating point units (FPU), SSE4A instructions, support for dual-channel DDR2 memory and other innovations.

AMD is expected to host official introduction of its quad-core AMD Opteron processors on the 10th of September. Initially AMD will offer quad-core microprocessors with reduced power consumption and clock-speed, but later in the year the chipmaker promised to release new versions of the quad-core Opteron with higher operating frequencies.