AMD has, just like Intel, plans to fit more cores inside its server processors. Intel recently demonstrated a Nehalem-based Xeon processor with eight cores and now AMD has made its counter-move. It has made its first official presentation of a hexa-core Opteron processor code-named Istanbul. AMD installed four of these in a rack server and showed some load tests with 24 physical cores in Windows Server 2008.
4 x 6 core Istanbul Opterons = 24 cores
Istanbul is very similar to Shanghai as it slides into the Socket F platform with 45nm technology and 6MB L2 cache to boot it becomes a simple and convenient upgrade for current Socket F systems. The only thing needed is support for dual power channels and a BIOS update.
“To illustrate the performance difference between the two boxes, the AMD tech ran a Stream benchmark. The 16-core Shanghai system produced throughput numbers in the range of 25,000 MB/s. The 24-core Istanbul box, by contrast, hit about 42,000 MB/s. The tech then swapped the processor-and-memory daughtercards between the two boxes, and of course, the performance characteristics moved with them.” – TechReport
AMD is expected to release its Istanbul processors in the second half of 2009 and it seems to have come a long way already since the presentation. TechReport has more information from the press event.
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