First 8P AMD Opteron Server Announced

by Anton Shilov
04/08/2004 | 02:19 PM

As reported earlier this week, Moscow, Russia-based system integrator MaxSelect unveiled the world’s first server based on eight AMD Opteron microprocessors. While the machines are expected to be available a bit later this year, some juicy details in regards the never before seen AMD64 servers were revealed already this week.

MaxSelect unveiled its Advantage 8485 and 8486 servers this week. Both servers are based on AMD 8111 + AMD 8131 core-logic and contain 2 mainboards for 4 CPUs. However, the unlike the presence of two mainboards may imply, this is not a cluster-like technology because mainboards are connected with HyperTransport bus and all 8 chips can operate simultaneously rapidly sharing the load and data between each other at the speed of 800MHz. Mainboards for the Advantage 8485 and 8446 servers are to be made by one of the leading server platform developers.

Both servers are capable of working with up to 64GB of PC2700 or PC3200 memory, are equipped with 4 PCI-X 64-bit 100/133MHz slots, offer 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports and have integrated ATI Rage XL graphics chip onboard.

The world’s first 8P AMD64 servers come in 4U chassis that have 6 racks for SCSI or Serial ATA HDDs. The MaxSelect Advantage 8485 sports Parallel ATA as well as Ultra 320 SCSI hard disk drives with RAID and hot-plug capabilities, while the model Advantage 8486 is designed to work with Parallel ATA as well as Serial ATA HDDs.

System management tools supplied with the newly released machines are expected to be Rioworks SmartWatch or IWILL CheckUP.

MaxSelect Advantage 8485 and 8486 servers are said to be available around July and support all AMD Opteron microprocessors, including models 848 and higher.

Additionally, the firm also offers 1U 4-way server systems based on AMD’s 64-bit server processors.