AMD finally goes native with Barcelona Entire computing platforms have come and gone* in the time that it has taken AMD to shove the four-core version of Opteron known as Barcelona into end customers' hands. AMD today will hold events in Spain and San Francisco to celebrate the release of its latest server chip. The Barcelona part - meant to arrive about six …
I've been waiting for these CPUs to come out. Good floating point, and as usual, AMD spanks Intel on NUMA memory bandwidth. A perfect scientific processor for large PDE problems.
And its good to see someone compete with Intel. I seriuosly worry about AMD. If they can't afford to build 45 nm fabs, then its game over for them in a couple years.
"I reall thought that AMD were going to put up a fight. Instead they release a part that's about 70% as fast as the one I got in my Mac 6 months ago."
Looks like you're still stuck in the MHz is king mentality that got the industry into the mess it's currently in.
These systems are much more than just the MHz, it's the interconnectivity and numeric processing capability that sets them apart from desktop processors. As good as Core 2 Duo chips are, these are faster for the tasks that are common for server applications.
I'm preparing to be unimpressed, although I really wish I wasn't. Until there's serious comparisons and parts that offer better performance than an Intel part at the same price I'm not biting.
I see AMD are already dismissing their one poor specInt result against a Xeon as being due to Intel's 'benchmarking compiler'. The reality is that Intel's compiler is simply better than gcc is..
Let's hope the other (AMD) benchmarks where they do clock higher are independently verified. Intel needs competition.
"I reall thought that AMD were going to put up a fight. Instead they release a part that's about 70% as fast as the one I got in my Mac 6 months ago."
classic mac-user comment. Loving it.
Raw clock speed, does not determine actual processing power, the point is, that these chips can acheive a lot more at the same speeds as intel's chips, just as the Core 2 Duo could achieve a lot more at the same speeds than the previous king, AMD's K8 (Windsor/Brisbane era)
don't mean to be funny, buyt go back to your double mocha and ipod touch and forget the real workd of technology, steve jobs designed it for you so you don;'t have to think, so don't try, it just embarrasses other mac users.
Perhaps they are slightly faster per clock cycle, and the integrated memory controller helps in some instances, but for server tasks, the FB Dimms rock, and there isn't enough of the antiquated MHz myth philosophy to talk away a 50% performance defecit. Give me any server related task, and I guarantee you that a pair of the 3.0 GHz XEONs will turn these new Spaniards into a smoking pile of burnt silicon. And don't start about how The 5300 series isn't a true Quad core, because the new Tigerton chips are supposed to come out this month. I love competition, and AMD chips used to eat Intels for lunch, but it ain't so anymore.
....I'm miles behind the bleeding edge, having just purchased the upgrade for our old DL145G2 - 2 x Opteron 275 cpus :-) Still it got me dual dual-core (if that makes sense) for less than £175 so watch me not care :-P
I echo the comments about 45nm - if AMD don't pull their finger out then I doubt it'll matter what architectural differences there are.
We NEED AMD. Anyone who remembers the very early 1990s (when x86 = Intel) will know just how much we need them!
yes I am kind of wondering about how well this does in the sixty four bit area the intel designs have not been all they could be in that platform and thats really needed now as the memory addressing is making 32 bit look more and more like a toy, god I never thought I would say this but 4G of ram is looking far too small even for desktops much less servers. I think we need benchmarks now dammit.
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