AMD Evolving Fast to Survive in the Server Market Jungle
by Johan De Gelas on June 18, 2013 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- AMD
- CPUs
- Arm
- Enterprise
Seattle: The Atom Killer?
The chip that has the potential to give Intel some real headaches is “Seattle”. It is a pretty revolutionary design for being an AMD CPU. No less than 8 or 16 ARM Cortex A57 are inside this new AMD lower power server SoC. The 28 nm SoC also integrates a 10Gbe controller, a SATA controller (high port count), encryption and compression module. But the real kicker is that this SoC will integrate some of the best Seamicro technology such as TIO (Turn It Off, reducing power by shutting down unnecessary interfaces) and the high performance Seamicro Freedom Fabric.
Single threaded performance will be similar to the Opteron X1150, but throughput should up to 4 times higher. There is little doubt in our minds that this might well be one of the best micro server CPU of 2014 (based upon the paper specs). It looks like the Intel Avoton will have a very potent challenger in Q1 2014.
Better Piledriver
It is clear that the micro server market gets the lion's share of AMD’s attention. However, the current piledriver based Opteron 6300 gets a small facelift in Q1 of 2014. Apparantly both the core and uncore have received quite a few minor tweaks, resulting in lower TDPs and a better performance/watt. This CPU with 12 or 16 “Piledriver Enhanced” cores is called “Warsaw”.
Conclusion
The Opteron-X, Opteron 6300 and “Berlin” CPU will all face stiff competition from the Intel alternatives. The integrated GPU of Berlin will make it very attractive for the HPC market, but it looks like Intel will probably have the upper hand in most of the traditional server markets.
However, the combined AMD, ARM and Seamicro technology inside AMD’s new Seattle CPU look extremely promising: these are probably the best specs of a micro server CPU we have seen so far. And since all the right components are now in place, it looks like the micro server is ready for prime time. There is little doubt that Seamicro servers will continue to thrive in their niche market while HP's Moonshot and Dell's Viking will make the market much more popular. So there is good chance that AMD will make a big comeback in 2014 in the server market.
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Wilco1 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Didn't you read the news that Intel appears to be delaying 14nm introduction to 2015? And where did you see that Avoton has 20 cores? At best they might have 8.Nobody has compared A57 and Avoton branch predictors yet, so the jury is out on that. Same for power efficiency.
1008anan - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
A friend Ashraf wrote an article about the 14 nm "delay" not being that big of a delay:http://seekingalpha.com/article/1503982-intel-s-14...
Avoton SoC packages might include 20 cores. More than one die per package.
JDG1980 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I know I love to get my tech news from *investment* websites. (/sarcasm)Wilco1 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
A delay is a delay. And a link to a tech site which mentions that 20 core Avoton?iwod - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
14nm is only being delayed on Desktop where there are NO competition. It is on schedule for Atom and Mobile CPU.LordanSS - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I believe the road AMD has chosen has a good future for them... the only problem is that, currently, that road is very rocky and difficult to drive through.Once they manage to fulfill their "Fusion" plans, we won't need to be bothered by the anemic FPU units paired on each Piledriver/Steamroller/whatever module, mostly because that computing should be done on the GPU (which, by the time the Fusion is complete, would be an integral part of the processor itself).
Unfortunately we're still a few years away from such... and I hope they (greatly) improve integer performance on their cores until then. But I do believe it's going to happen, and it'll be great.
Think of the old "math co-processors" of the past, back in the 386 days (they got integrated on the 486 models). The only difference now tho, is that a GCN IGP unit of today has an order of magnitude more compute/FPU power than Intel parts. If you fast forward to the future, and get that improved even more and fused into the CPU....
RandSec - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
"AMD can't expect third-party code to be rewritten to accomodate their processors." AMD doesn't have the market share to tell software vendors to do things their way."Not true. AMD has *more* than mere market share, it has *complete* *market* *dominance* in the new gaming consoles. *All* of gaming graphics software expertise is now focused on leveraging CPU / GPU tradeoffs in the AMD APU design. If advantages really exist, they will be found and exposed, and new software will go that way as well, if only for AMD users. For example, it would seem that the GPU has plenty of fast FP, which need not also be in the CPU, *provided* it can be accessed easily without copying back and forth.
ruiner5000 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
What is this second great depression we are talking about? I think that is a myth. I don't see any dust bowls or soup lines. Certainly not here in Austin, where AMD is. What you had to wait an extra week to pick up your iPhone 5 and were depressed, and that's the 2nd great depression? Have you ever talked to anyone who was actually alive during the great depression? Wimps.SunLord - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
We're not going to see any major x86 architecture changes from AMD till at least 2015 if not 2016 thats about how long it takes to design and deploy a newly designed architecture which is hopefully what the major rehires from last year will be working on. So we're stuck with mostly minor tweaks and enhancements till then.TiredOldFart2 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Forget low power arm servers, give me a hybrid. Give me a box with x86 and arm cpus, and allocates resources based on use scenario.Give this to the market cheap and with low power usage and carve your way back into relevance.