As an interesting statistic, Patla identified that whilst the 4P sector was lucrative, the 2P segment made up 75 per cent of the market.
Source:
AMD
2010 high-end - 2P/4P
Most of the information is already in the public domain, but Patla drew specific attention to the Magny-Cours platform, to be released in 2010, that will provide the backbone of high-end 2P and 4P servers.
The chips will be built by GlobalFoundries on its 45nm process and will ship with either eight or 12 cores, backed up by 12MB L3 cache. They will each have four HyperTransport links and support registered DDR3 memory, up to three DIMMs per channel - or 12 per chip.
Magny-Cours will sit on an all-AMD G34-based chipset that'll be called Maranello. In terms of branding, they will be known as Opteron 6000-series.
2010 mainstream - 1P/2P
The mainstream parts will be based on a four- and six-core Lisbon chip, geared towards 1P and 2P usage, meaning a maximum of two HT links. Backed by 6MB L3 cache, the CPUs will mostly be hewn from existing technology.
The chipset part is, again, new. This time, the C32-based San Marino or low-power Adelaide chipsets, based on AMD technology, will be optimised for energy efficiency.
Product nomenclature is such that they will be branded Opteron 4100-series.
2011 - 1P/2P/4P
At the high end, Magny-Cours will be supplanted by Interlagos, a 32nm-built chip with either 12 or 16 execution cores. What's interesting here is that it will be architected on the just-announced Bulldozer core. We suppose the 'new core' allusion gives it away.
Bulldozer will be pared-down for the mid-range part Valencia, comprising of a six- or eight-core design.
AMD's Opteron once held the high ground when compared to Intel's server offerings. We reckon the boot is just about on the other foot...for now at least, and we wait with bated breath to see what kind of performance Bulldozer-driven Opteron can deliver in 2011.
