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AMD has finally released their die shrink CPUs with their server based Opteron processor. Available now will be the 75 watt quad core CPU ranging from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz sporting 6MB of L3 cache. The desktop based processors, code-name Dragon, are planned to arrive Q1 2009. The performance gains on the Opteron chips are pretty impressive with 35% performance increase while reducing power consumption by 35% while idle. The best part is that they will simply drop in the previous 65nm Barcelona sockets so that upgrading won’t require a new motherboard.

The EE Times article really gets in-depth into the internals of the CPU and how it didn’t use a brand new metal combination for the transistor gates. Intel did use a new combination that allows it to get some better performance for its 45nm chips but overall these AMD chips do very well. The best feature seems to be the lower power consumption and lower heat production. These two factors are crucial in building datacenters because soon the costs of electricity will overrun the costs of the hardware itself. They give one example of a datacenter powered exclusively on solar cells, Affordable Internet Services Online, which already uses existing AMD Opterons in its servers.

I have not read any previous articles from the EETimes, but I am really impressed with how in-depth and technical they get, it is quite refreshing. It is a long ready, but definitely worth it if you are interested in these sort of things. It is good to see AMD back on track, hopefully my next server will have one of these Shanghai Opterons.

Full Article: EETimes