Advanced Micro Devices on Monday introduced its latest Intel fighter, the Opteron 6000 series. AMD is making big promises with the new processor that addresses what it sees as pain points for today’s server customers.
The Opteron 6000 accomplishes this with eight- and 12-core x86 processors aimed at the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market. The platform boasts up to 119 percent improved performance over AMD’s last generation server chips without boosting the price or losing any power. The message behind the Opteron 6000 series is more cores and performance for less money.
“We are seeing further evidence of a divergence in the x86 server space,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. “There is a fundamental divergence between what AMD and Intel are doing. For many years, people got a little too used to the idea that there was a certain level of parity between the companies’ systems.”
Let the Battle Begin
King said that notion of parity ended when AMD first introduced its Opteron product in the first half of this decade. The Opteron caused Intel to rush to catch up to AMD. Intel seized the lead from AMD, both technologically speaking and in mindshare, in the last couple of years. Now, King said, AMD is looking to take back some turf.
“AMD is looking to gain ground not by having the biggest, baddest best chip on the market so much as they are blending a notable boost in performance with very aggressive pricing, and also with claims of significantly better power consumption,” King said. “That said, it’s going to take a while to sort out the relative merits of different systems based on these chips. To my mind, increasingly, especially on the server side of the business, a microprocessor is just one piece of a large complex system story.”
With the Opteron…