Intel Itanium outsells AMD Opteron

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Intel kicked off its Itanium presentation today by saying the Itanium's system revenue since the introduction of 2001 has crossed the $5 billion mark. That outsells total sales of AMD's Opterons.

And, according to IDC Itanium sales surpassed all of SPARC sales for the first time since the introduction of the Itanium. That was in 2001 and was the culmination of former CEO Andy Grove's dreams of a microprocessor that was truly mission critical.

Never before has Intel put two billion transistors onto a transistor. The presenter said that if I started clicking on his foils and there were two billion of them, it would take 62 years,

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http://www.tgdaily.com/networking-br...ls-amd-opteron


:shocked::shocked:


i guess itanic is not a failure after all eh? what exactly is its allure though?

Itanium isn't x86 so surely these two aren't competing products?

$5 billion
I thought Itanium total shipped SKU
lolz

i think they mixed something up, intel has SPENT $5bn on itanium, not MADE $5bn with it ^^
seriously tho, even if they made that much money with it, the dev costs were several times that of an x86 cpu to date, so yeah, it better does make more money than x86 cpus :D

this point would be somewhat valid about itanium outselling opteron but opteron was released 2 years after itanium.

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Never before has Intel put two billion transistors onto a transistor.

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I see the secret! :P

Horrid writing, no source.... ya good news

and price of one Itanium procesor is?

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Originally Posted by saaya

i think they mixed something up, intel has SPENT $5bn on itanium, not MADE $5bn with it ^^
seriously tho, even if they made that much money with it, the dev costs were several times that of an x86 cpu to date, so yeah, it better does make more money than x86 cpus :D

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Actually Intel was not alone in the development process, HP was also involved so afaik part of that investment was shared between the two. I work for HP Enterprise Business and I've stated before on this forum that Itanium is not by far unsuccessful like people make it out to be. We configure and sell Itanium systems on a daily basis and although I can not get into details it doesn't surprise me at all that on a whole it outsold the Opteron...

stupid headline, its outsell in total sales, what would you expect, it also cost 100X more

one question.... who uses itanium cpu's ???? large corporation who run them on clusters for scientific purpose ???? if so they did what they were meant.... and btw before the opteron came to market a large numbers of top500 supercomputer were using itanium iirc

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Originally Posted by Oj101

Itanium isn't x86 so surely these two aren't competing products?

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+1
Each Itanium CPU costs at least 10x more I bet... Not even talking about all the other hardware that's required to run it.

Revenue != Profit

They can make 5B in revenue but -5B on profit.

why would intel want to sell a bunch of non x86 cpus?

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

why would intel want to sell a bunch of non x86 cpus?

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good question...lolz

If I remember correctly, Itaniums used to run about 3-5k when they first came out in 2001, so in today's market if it comes out like that again [which prolly will since Opterons and some Xeons can get up to almost 2k] it should be around 10x the price of i7 CPUs [with 920 being at an avg of $250 and the next one up at around $500].

On a side note how do you explain "Never before has Intel put two billion transistors onto a transistor."? I guess he meant processor instead.

Titanic price list:
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18445

Processor C/T Speed Turbo L3 cache QPI TDP Price
Itanium 9350 4/8 1.73 GHz 1.86 GHz 24 MB 4.8 GT/s 185 W $3,838
Itanium 9340 4/8 1.60 GHz 1.73 GHz 20 MB 4.8 GT/s 185 W $2,059
Itanium 9330 4/8 1.46 GHz 1.60 GHz 20 MB 4.8 GT/s 155 W $2,059
Itanium 9320 4/8 1.33 GHz 1.46 GHz 16 MB 4.8 GT/s 155 W $1,614
Itanium 9310 2/4 1.60 GHz N/A 10 MB 4.8 GT/s 130 W $946

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

why would intel want to sell a bunch of non x86 cpus?

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Because large corps got deeper pockets and their IT engineers are playing with someone else's money so they get the latest and gratest no matter the price.

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Originally Posted by Katanai

Actually Intel was not alone in the development process, HP was also involved so afaik part of that investment was shared between the two. I work for HP Enterprise Business and I've stated before on this forum that Itanium is not by far unsuccessful like people make it out to be. We configure and sell Itanium systems on a daily basis and although I can not get into details it doesn't surprise me at all that on a whole it outsold the Opteron...

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thx for the infos :toast:
well i think the main problem is that intel aimed way too high... they claimed it would be the next big thing, it would replace x86, every server would use itaniums yadda yadda... and while im sure there are quite some itnaium servers sold... i wouldnt really call it successful...

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Originally Posted by Sn0wm@n

one question.... who uses itanium cpu's ???? large corporation who run them on clusters for scientific purpose ???? if so they did what they were meant.... and btw before the opteron came to market a large numbers of top500 supercomputer were using itanium iirc

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i think military and gov... mission critical...

mission critical or military grade components basically means top quality no matter the cost... almost literally... whether the quality is beyond what actually makes sense is topic for long debates... :D

i for one think there are much more "price conscientious" ways to reach the same level of reliability or a high enough level of reliability... most people dont care because they dont realize that its their tax money that is used to buy systems that cost 10-100x or comparable retail products...

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

why would intel want to sell a bunch of non x86 cpus?

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many belive that intel originally planned to kill off amd that way or at least lock them out of the lucrative server market and doom them to a second grade cheap and low revenue market segments...

it makes perfect sense...
amd could not possibly compete with intel if they manage to establish some different instruction set. thats the main point of amds and intels success of the past decades, locking everybody out of x86, or keeping them locked out...

Itanium is known as the most stable processor if Im not mistaking.... They are NONE 32bit...
Price range on 1K volume starts just below the 1K USD mark.... and goes to 4K.....

Not so important stuff for end users ;)

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

why would intel want to sell a bunch of non x86 cpus?

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The x86 instruction set isn't exactly the best thing ever made. For mission critical systems that have giant budgets and possibly run custom software a new instruction set isn't too ridiculous because no one is looking for comparability at that level compared to consumers.

on an unrelated noted, I wonder if cuda could become a competitor to these types of systems at least in the high performance space probably not the enterprise level.

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Originally Posted by haylui

good question...lolz

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I think they wanted to replace x86 with IA64 at some point... slowly moving from super high-end computers to enthusiast solutions and then ordinary desktop ones.
But it didn't quite work out.
Pity.

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Originally Posted by saaya

i wouldnt really call it successful...

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I would. There are companies that buy only Itanium based systems from us. It's too much to explain in a post but believe me when I say that one of our Superdomes with 128 cores and a maximum of 1TB of RAM ain't no joke. But it's not really about that, you can make a much faster system using x86 CPU's for a fraction of the price. The main thing is the mission critical part. A Superdome simply put will not fail, no matter what. Some companies are ready to pay large amounts of money for that assurance. It's just that normal people never hear about these systems. No part of it, starting from the CPU and up to the OS, usually HP-UX, is meant for the consumer market. Just to give you an idea on how widespread this architecture is, here's a link with our Superdome customers:

http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/...customers.html

Remember that these are multimillion dollar systems. That list doesn't include customers for our RX series servers or Itanium based blades, which are much more accessible and much more widespread...

Ford outsells Lamborghini ! :rocker:

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Itanium's system revenue since the introduction of 2001 has crossed the $5 billion mark. That outsells total sales of AMD's Opterons.

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Let's not forget that Opterons came later (mid-2003), and AMD then was
more of an underdog with much lower market share and volume...

amd and intel need to come together and make a successor to x86.....like x64 or something?

$5bn is all AMD Opterons sold since 2003? Hardly. Also hardly for Itanium.
Would be nice if we had some market share, market movement and such figures instead.

I don't know why people are comparing Opteron and Itanium. They're totally different markets. Someone looking to buy an Opteron isn't going to consider Itanium and vice versa.

Wow, I want a $4k+ 1.7ghz cpu for my desktop. I would rather build 2 servers with amd opterons and if the first goes down, I just flip the power switch on the second and go about my day.

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Originally Posted by therightway

I don't know why people are comparing Opteron and Itanium. They're totally different markets. Someone looking to buy an Opteron isn't going to consider Itanium and vice versa.

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so you are saying amd has no enterprise offering?

I think his main point is that Itanium doesn't even execute the same code. There aren't a whole lot of times that you're going to build a server and ponder what instruction set is right for you. You'll know if you want an IA64 product or x86 product.

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Originally Posted by Wiggy McShades

so you are saying amd has no enterprise offering?

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No, he's saying they won't even run the same software. It's not like when we're picking parts for our rigs, when you pick Itanium it's because Itanium isn't x86 (and avoids all the problems x86 has), it's built like a tank, and does the job you need it for well.

Like comparing Sparc and PowerPC to x86 you can get raw performance numbers but that isn't the big picture. All three platforms sell because they offer something else, and while Opteron offers a different flavour than the Xeons it's still x86.

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Originally Posted by Iconyu

No, he's saying they won't even run the same software. It's not like when we're picking parts for our rigs, when you pick Itanium it's because Itanium isn't x86 (and avoids all the problems x86 has), it's built like a tank, and does the job you need it for well.

Like comparing Sparc and PowerPC to x86 you can get raw performance numbers but that isn't the big picture. All three platforms sell because they offer something else, and while Opteron offers a different flavour than the Xeons it's still x86.

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Well this is an enterprise solution, so what does amd have for the enterprise market? The Opteron and I would say that is competing.

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Originally Posted by Wiggy McShades

Well this is an enterprise solution, so what does amd have for the enterprise market? The Opteron and I would say that is competing.

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That's like saying 3/4" tubing is in competition with 1/2" tubing.

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Originally Posted by Power5

Wow, I want a $4k+ 1.7ghz cpu for my desktop. I would rather build 2 servers with amd opterons and if the first goes down, I just flip the power switch on the second and go about my day.

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You totally missed the point of Itanium offerings (or didn't read the thread to see you're repeating the already said ;))

wikipedia

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HP, the only one of the industry's top four server manufacturers to offer Itanium-based systems today, manufactures at least 80% of all Itanium systems. HP sold 7200 systems in the first quarter of 2006. The bulk of systems sold are enterprise servers and machines for large-scale technical computing, with an average selling price per system in excess of US$200,000. A typical system uses eight or more Itanium processors.

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hah

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Originally Posted by Power5

Wow, I want a $4k+ 1.7ghz cpu for my desktop. I would rather build 2 servers with amd opterons and if the first goes down, I just flip the power switch on the second and go about my day.

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If you have enough engineers, you could probably design a software solution for hardware redundancy but that requires a lot of man power and a lot of complexity. Not to mention a lot of maintenance. A team of good engineers will cost you a lot more than a few processors. Plus, there's no guarantee that it's going to be any better than what you currently got in place.

So they finally sold two in a year huh? :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by alfaunits

$5bn is all AMD Opterons sold since 2003? Hardly. Also hardly for Itanium.
Would be nice if we had some market share, market movement and such figures instead.

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The only graph dating back about 10 years that I could find with a minimal search shows both AMD and Intel's overall market share. Not server CPU specific.

http://www.kalionzes.net/computers/marketshare.jpg

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Originally Posted by Andrew LB

The only graph dating back about 10 years that I could find with a minimal search shows both AMD and Intel's overall market share. Not server CPU specific.

http://www.kalionzes.net/computers/marketshare.jpg

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that perfectly demonstrates how close AMD's market share was to Intel's right before the release of Intel's C2D on July 27, 2006

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Originally Posted by hollo

wikipediahah

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So like 1.440.000.000$ just for that quarter ;)

The market share picture is not the server market share:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...Shipments.html
Currently, Intel has 89% of server market share. I didn't know Intel had such a large server share, it's not hard to have the same revenue with Itanium as with Opterons.

Itanium will of course make much more profit per unit compared to AMDs.

It's like comparing a Lamborghini to a Toyota. Lambo makes much more profit for every car that's sold.

I wonder how the stack up to the POWER series from IBM.

Yeah, you got the point. The POWERPC processors should be the main competitiors for Itanium.

POWER7 is very impressive. its 3-4 times faster than POWER6 and much faster than x86 chips. some details will be released tomorrow actually and it should compete very well.

It's not x times faster than x86 - it's a totally different architecture, it's faster in a specific scenario 3-4 times. It's the same as saying C2D is twice faster than P4 dual-cores.

However this is quite a movement. I expected something like this in 2008 when the USD was very low (either lower price of Itaniums out of US, or more income at the same non-EUR currency level).
Tukwilla wasn't even out for sale yet ;)

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Originally Posted by alfaunits

It's not x times faster than x86 - it's a totally different architecture, it's faster in a specific scenario 3-4 times. It's the same as saying C2D is twice faster than P4 dual-cores.

However this is quite a movement. I expected something like this in 2008 when the USD was very low (either lower price of Itaniums out of US, or more income at the same non-EUR currency level).
Tukwilla wasn't even out for sale yet ;)

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No, actually its not saying a C2D is twice faster than P4 hyperthread.

It is like saying a GTX-260 is much faster than a Nehalem, or whatever x86 chip.

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Originally Posted by Andrew LB

The only graph dating back about 10 years that I could find with a minimal search shows both AMD and Intel's overall market share. Not server CPU specific.

http://www.kalionzes.net/computers/marketshare.jpg

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I'm sorry to say but that Market share graph is meaningless. Market Share of what? All processors, Desktop, mobile, Server, Bunny suit figurines?

That graph is missing context. You can throw it out as see AMD almost matched Intel in Market Share of processor returns??

From the IDC report Jan 26, 2010:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/hardware/...l-idc-says-516


Intel shipped 80.5 percent of PC microprocessors worldwide during the fourth quarter, a drop from an 81.9 percent share it held in the fourth quarter of 2008. AMD's market share was 19.4 percent during the fourth quarter, increasing from 17.7 percent the previous year.

As you can see this data does not even match what is on the graph.

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Originally Posted by lkiller123

Itanium will of course make much more profit per unit compared to AMDs.

It's like comparing a Lamborghini to a Toyota. Lambo makes much more profit for every car that's sold.

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Actually I disagree. They will make more "per unit" profit but less total profit.

If you take all of the R&D and manufacturing costs into account, they may not have turned a profit yet. That is a very expensive to manufacture low volume part.

If you look at IDC (as of Q3 of last year), you will see the following in lifetime SERVER shipments:

Itanium: 275,227
Opteron: 4,101,514

That basically says that for the life of both products, Opteron has outsold Itanium by almost 15:1 (and Itanium had a 2 year head start).

I believe what that used might have been total system cost, which is a bit unfair. A $200K HP Superdome probably nets Intel ~$4-8K in silicon revenue (or, ~2-4% of that total system price). If the average 2P server is ~$3500-4000 and average 2P CPU is ~$300-400 in ASP then you have an interesting dilemma.

Would you rather have 2% of the system price on a 275K market or ~10% of the system price on a 4.1M unit market?

If you really want to look at revenue, let's compare silicon revenue on both products, not total server revenue becuase intel only takes home a very narrow sliver of the $5B they were talking about. I'd even bet that the total itanium silicon revenue number is probably lower than the total itanium R&D + manufacturing costs.

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

Actually I disagree. They will make more "per unit" profit but less total profit.

If you take all of the R&D and manufacturing costs into account, they may not have turned a profit yet. That is a very expensive to manufacture low volume part.

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That's very true. I doubt that Itanium is unprofitable, though, the chip and the platform costs are insane.

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

A $200K HP Superdome

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Hahahaha! :ROTF:

Try multiplying that by 10. :) See, that's why these systems are unknown to the general public. They are in a totally different league. That's also why I think this comparison to the Opteron is a bit unfair. The only thing they got in common is that they are both CPU's. Any other similarity ends there. Still there is no one stopping AMD to come out with a high end architecture of their own. Yet they don't, the only thing they got is the Opteron, that to be frank, was totally killed, not by Itanium but by Nehalem. We'll see though, they have a chance to make a comeback with these 12 core chips that are soon to be released...

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Originally Posted by Katanai

Hahahaha! :ROTF:

Try multiplying that by 10. :) See, that's why these systems are unknown to the general public. They are in a totally different league. That's also why I think this comparison to the Opteron is a bit unfair. The only thing they got in common is that they are both CPU's. Any other similarity ends there. Still there is no one stopping AMD to come out with a high end architecture of their own. Yet they don't, the only thing they got is the Opteron, that to be frank, was totally killed, not by Itanium but by Nehalem. We'll see though, they have a chance to make a comeback with these 12 core chips that are soon to be released...

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considering that amd still manages to sell opteron chips for a thousand bugs a piece, i wouldnt really say nehalem has killed the opteron ;)
especially since your saying a certain architecture killed a marketing name and series of another company... which doesnt make sense :P

and whether amd will have a come back or not is not a question... their cpu designs are way focussed on the server space, and we all know that bulldozer is a sever chip first and a desktop and mobile chip second... just like nehalem...im sure bulldozer will be a great chip... the thing is just that im sure sandybridge will at least be as much of a great chip as bulldozer...

id really like to know why bulldozer didnt come out in 2009 as planned... that would have been quite something...
amd could have caught up to intel and even surpassed them...

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Originally Posted by Andrew LB

The only graph dating back about 10 years that I could find with a minimal search shows both AMD and Intel's overall market share. Not server CPU specific.

http://www.kalionzes.net/computers/marketshare.jpg

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This graph must be of retail CPU marketshare. I know in server and mobile CPUs, Intel has a higher share.

Bulldozer in 2009 would have been a DDR-2 based processor. There were changes made to the processor that also allowed it to get more performance and scalability. The Bulldozer that was defined for 2009 is not what you will be seeing in 2011. We made the changes and realigned the schedule to make it more compeititive.

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Originally Posted by saaya

considering that amd still manages to sell opteron chips for a thousand bugs a piece, i wouldnt really say nehalem has killed the opteron ;)
especially since your saying a certain architecture killed a marketing name and series of another company... which doesnt make sense :P

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Yeah but that's exactly what happened and it does make sense. The Nehalems might still be called Xeon but we're talking about a totally different chip here. A chip that was specially designed for the server market with only one goal in mind: to destroy the Opteron. And quite frankly it has succeeded in doing that. There's no need to be indirect here, we all know how Intel thinks as a company. The Opteron had some key advantages over the old Xeon chips, which made it successful, especially in multiprocessor configurations. Namely the HyperTransport link, a faster integrated memory controller and you could argue that it also could have a higher CPU count per socket as the 6 core versions were more accessible and a bit more widespread than the Intel equivalent. The Nehalem architecture negated all these advantages, not only that but it surpassed it in all these aspects with the QuickPath Interconnect, integrated triple channel DDR3 controller and Hyper-Threading Technology. That's the truth really and that's why Nehalem is spreading like crazy on the server market while the Opteron, at best, stagnates. :shrug:

that graph is utter bull:banana::banana::banana::banana:, do not post it again (especially without a source).

amd and intel were never at parity. i don't see any mention of amd being over 30% market share in any segment, in this link?


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/int...n-server-chips


lets not revise history shall we?



edit: wtf is "http://www.kalionzes.net/" (where the graph is from)? its not even a technology site?

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Originally Posted by god_43

that graph is utter bull:banana::banana::banana::banana:, do not post it again (especially without a source).

amd and intel were never at parity. i don't see any mention of amd being over 30% market share in any segment, in this link?


http://www.marketwatch.com/story/int...n-server-chips


lets not revise history shall we?



edit: wtf is "http://www.kalionzes.net/" (where the graph is from)? its not even a technology site?

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I know that graph in earlier variants (less quarters displayed). IIRC it shows retail desktop market share. Numbers should be from one of the known ones (Gartner, Mercury or IDC) - but these are also estimations if I'm correct.

my day is never complete w/o reading an awesome spin ad from spintel. keep on spinning! xD

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AMD owned 25.3% of the total market, up from 23.3% a year ago, based on calculations from AG Edwards analyst David Wong, who cited preliminary data from Mercury Research.

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theswe are estimates from mercury at that time....but everyone else was pretty much saying the samething?


http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-...2-report#close

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2006/01/6053.ars


http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070215PD218.html


i also find it interesting to read the old comments from these articles...its like going back in time!





edit: here is another good one: http://www.digitimes.com/bits_chips/a20070316PR203.html

IIRC AMDs push of x64 was the thing Intel was afraid the most. It was the stinger in their ass that showd you dont need 4k cpu to make a supercomputer :)

And intel was forced to introduce x64 in "ordinary" cpus, although they really-really didnt want to.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 ;)

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History of AMD64
AMD64 was created as an alternative to Intel and Hewlett Packard's radically different IA-64 architecture. Originally announced in 1999 with a full specification in August 2000,[1] the architecture was positioned by AMD from the beginning as an evolutionary way to add 64-bit computing capabilities to the existing x86 architecture, as opposed to Intel's approach of creating an entirely new 64-bit architecture with IA-64.
The first AMD64-based processor, the Opteron, was released in April 2003.

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Originally Posted by zalbard

+1
Each Itanium CPU costs at least 10x more I bet... Not even talking about all the other hardware that's required to run it.

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the OTHER hardware is comparable to everything else, I do seem to recall hearing about socket compatibility with nehalem systems...

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Originally Posted by Particle

I think his main point is that Itanium doesn't even execute the same code.

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yes it can. do some research. IA64 can run x86 code, just not well.

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Originally Posted by anubis

IIRC AMDs push of x64 was the thing Intel was afraid the most. It was the stinger in their ass that showd you dont need 4k cpu to make a supercomputer :)

And intel was forced to introduce x64 in "ordinary" cpus, although they really-really didnt want to.

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64 ;)

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02...d_weber_scc13/

Here is an interview of former AMD CTO Fred Weber (one of the great technologist in the industry, and one of the fathers of the K6/K7/K8 lineage)... it gives a great insight into what AMD was thinking when they put in AMD64 into the mix.

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Originally Posted by Katanai

Yeah but that's exactly what happened and it does make sense. The Nehalems might still be called Xeon but we're talking about a totally different chip here. A chip that was specially designed for the server market with only one goal in mind: to destroy the Opteron. And quite frankly it has succeeded in doing that. There's no need to be indirect here, we all know how Intel thinks as a company. The Opteron had some key advantages over the old Xeon chips, which made it successful, especially in multiprocessor configurations. Namely the HyperTransport link, a faster integrated memory controller and you could argue that it also could have a higher CPU count per socket as the 6 core versions were more accessible and a bit more widespread than the Intel equivalent. The Nehalem architecture negated all these advantages, not only that but it surpassed it in all these aspects with the QuickPath Interconnect, integrated triple channel DDR3 controller and Hyper-Threading Technology. That's the truth really and that's why Nehalem is spreading like crazy on the server market while the Opteron, at best, stagnates. :shrug:

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are you actually active in the server world? Nehalem didn't destroy the opteron at all, yes Intel gained some market share against opteron due to the performance lack in some SW parts previous xeon versions had and nehalem no longer, but the response with istanbul stagered that again in many areas. Lots of sales on AMD is now waiting for the new platform launch, which Intel is quite affraid off, since they are changing roadmaps all the time with gainestown to counter that launch. Don't forget AMD doubled the amount cores and 4 channel ddr3 MC in a 2s box that is for example a lot of virtualization performance.

Not everyone buys the top bin you know, and AMD systems are way cheaper with OEM discount then Intel.

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

are you actually active in the server world? Nehalem didn't destroy the opteron at all, yes Intel gained some market share against opteron due to the performance lack in some SW parts previous xeon versions had and nehalem no longer, but the response with istanbul stagered that again in many areas. Lots of sales on AMD is now waiting for the new platform launch, which Intel is quite affraid off, since they are changing roadmaps all the time with gainestown to counter that launch. Don't forget AMD doubled the amount cores and 4 channel ddr3 MC in a 2s box that is for example a lot of virtualization performance.

Not everyone buys the top bin you know, and AMD systems are way cheaper with OEM discount then Intel.

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Yes actually I am and like I've said Nehalem is selling like crazy. It's a very successful architecture. And the part with AMD systems being way cheaper is more of a myth than anything. The platform as a whole is a bit cheaper in most cases but the difference is not as big as you make it out to be. I don't know where you have the info from that AMD is making lots of sales right now. As for virtualization performance, until AMD implements an analogue to Hyper-threading they don't got anything going for them. Doubling the amount of cores is not really the best solution as it also almost doubles the costs. We'll have to wait and see, 12 core CPU's sound good. If they manage to take the next step and manage to implement a form of Hyper-threading technology to the next generation, like they are talking now, those CPUs should be monsters. Don't get me wrong though, I got absolutely nothing against AMD. The Opteron was a revolutionary CPU and it actually sold less than it should have. I'm just saying it how it is at the moment...

Anyway enough thread derailing, this is about Itanium not Nehalem...

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Originally Posted by Katanai

Yes actually I am and like I've said Nehalem is selling like crazy. It's a very successful architecture. And the part with AMD systems being way cheaper is more of a myth than anything. The platform as a whole is a bit cheaper in most cases but the difference is not as big as you make it out to be. I don't know where you have the info from that AMD is making lots of sales right now. As for virtualization performance, until AMD implements an analogue to Hyper-threading they don't got anything going for them. Doubling the amount of cores is not really the best solution as it also almost doubles the costs. We'll have to wait and see, 12 core CPU's sound good. If they manage to take the next step and manage to implement a form of Hyper-threading technology to the next generation, like they are talking now, those CPUs should be monsters. Don't get me wrong though, I got absolutely nothing against AMD. The Opteron was a revolutionary CPU and it actually sold less than it should have. I'm just saying it how it is at the moment...

Anyway enough thread derailing, this is about Itanium not Nehalem...

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hyperthreading in virtualization is only usefull when you have huge amount of very small vm's, once you have many vCPU VM with avarage/high load hyperthreading is useless, real cores aren't. perhaps check this and look at my remark below about price and question again why so many people buy intel for virtualization: (not to mention before nehalem was there or the crap 7xxx series in virtualization) http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3571&p=10
It's only the top bin that is a bit faster but also double price.

I assume that you are talking about retail prices, I talk about major volume where an AMD 2435 is almost equal to E5530 in price. Now check again where the price/performance ratio will be..... not to mention soon to be released 4000-6000 series adding cores isn't the biggest cost, that is small die size.

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

I assume that you are talking about retail prices, I talk about major volume where an AMD 2435 is almost equal to E5530 in price. Now check again where the price/performance ratio will be..... not to mention soon to be released 4000-6000 series adding cores isn't the biggest cost, that is small die size.

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I would say that even if we accept all your assumptions about the volume prices, even then E5530 will be probably a bit better option then 2435.

Spec.org dual-cpu system.
SpecInt_rate/SpecFP_rate:

Opteron 2435 205/143
Xeon E5530 209/165

Sorry for offtop.

The comparison of the X5570 to the Opteron 2435 is always interesting. They have a raw performance edge, but the processor is priced at $1386 vs our $1019. That makes it 36% more expensive. If they have less than a 36% performance advantage (which is almost always the case) then the AMD is going to deliver better price performance.

I've done the math in other places because there are some that will arge those are the list prices and system price is different. When you configure like for like system on, for instance, Dell's site, you see the price delta go UP and at the platform level the price differential was higher.

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

The comparison of the X5570 to the Opteron 2435 is always interesting. They have a raw performance edge, but the processor is priced at $1386 vs our $1019. That makes it 36% more expensive. If they have less than a 36% performance advantage (which is almost always the case) then the AMD is going to deliver better price performance.

I've done the math in other places because there are some that will arge those are the list prices and system price is different. When you configure like for like system on, for instance, Dell's site, you see the price delta go UP and at the platform level the price differential was higher.

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What about overall system prices? or do most people buy only upgrade CPUs?

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Originally Posted by JF-AMD

The comparison of the X5570 to the Opteron 2435 is always interesting. They have a raw performance edge, but the processor is priced at $1386 vs our $1019. That makes it 36% more expensive. If they have less than a 36% performance advantage (which is almost always the case) then the AMD is going to deliver better price performance.

I've done the math in other places because there are some that will arge those are the list prices and system price is different. When you configure like for like system on, for instance, Dell's site, you see the price delta go UP and at the platform level the price differential was higher.

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I am little surprised to hear such things from a marketing guy.
First, a cpu price difference is never proportional to actual performance difference even in the same line of cpus. But you probably know it even better then me.
Second, your performance/price equation is partially useful for home PC user but in busines/server space it is completely BS. Even if X5570 only 20% faster then 2435 do you really think that %20 more work which potentially can be done in, lets say, two years, costs only $250 diff between cpus?

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Originally Posted by kl0012

I am little surprised to hear such things from a marketing guy.
First, a cpu price difference is never proportional to actual performance difference even in the same line of cpus. But you probably know it even better then me.
Second, your performance/price equation is partially useful for home PC user but in busines/server space it is completely BS. Even if X5570 only 20% faster then 2435 do you really think that %20 more work which potentially can be done in, lets say, two years, costs only $250 diff between cpus?

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No need to get angry or combative. I think it's cool that JF posts in this forum. It's always nice to get someone from inside AMD to post. I wish more executives would do that. As far as the price/performance ratio, obviously you have to take into account price vs performance. If performance is more important, then obviously Nehalem will be a better option. But if it isn't, Opteron presents a very compelling argument. Not every server runs at 100% capacity all the time. Most servers are at like 30% most of the time. If that were the case, Nehalem doesn't present much value beyond Opteron.

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Originally Posted by kl0012

do you really think that %20 more work which potentially can be done in, lets say, two years, costs only $250 diff between cpus?

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Do you really think that servers are even loaded 100% all the time? :rofl:

Funny, mainstream users don't need good graphics and now servers process data all the time without ever being in a state of idle. Any more shareholder quips?


BTW my take on why Nehalem is selling well: It's a proper open-ended platform with at least a guaranteed upgrade path. G34 and C32 are going to provide that too but as of now AMD's Socket F is a dead end platform and many businesses might not have proper motherboards (split power plane supports) etc to justify an Istanbul upgrade.

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Originally Posted by kl0012

I am little surprised to hear such things from a marketing guy.
First, a cpu price difference is never proportional to actual performance difference even in the same line of cpus. But you probably know it even better then me.
Second, your performance/price equation is partially useful for home PC user but in busines/server space it is completely BS. Even if X5570 only 20% faster then 2435 do you really think that %20 more work which potentially can be done in, lets say, two years, costs only $250 diff between cpus?

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Here's the reality of the situation: arguing about the performance of top bin processors is really meaningless. 95% of the server processors sold are not top bin.

As a marketing person, this tells me that raw performance (i.e. the highest test score) is not that relevant. What is, is either price/performance or performance/watt.

If you look at Mercury Reaseach (the leading company that does processor-level market research), you see that most server processors are sold in the N-3 or N-4 categories.

We do exceptionally well there because as you move down our stack, you still get top speed memory and top speed I/O. Intel artificially limits those products (I won't even try to guess as to why.)

If more people saw a value in getting proportionally more work done over 2-3 years, then you are absolutely right. However, all of the trends in the server market tell me that only ~5% of the workloads merit the top performance and the other 95% is looking for more balance. And that is what I believe we bring to the market.

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Originally Posted by qurious63ss

What about overall system prices? or do most people buy only upgrade CPUs?

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Actually at the system level, Intel's price premium goes up. This is from the work I did back in december (posted on anandtech forum), prices may have changed slightly, but should be close these levels.

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I actually went back to do a little math on this.

I went to Dell's site and configured 3 servers (PowerEdge 710 and PowerEdge 805). I held all components, warranty and other options equal.

The 3 servers were:
One with 2 Xeon 5570's and 36GB of RAM (3 channels) - $7408
One with 2 Xeon 5570's and 32GB of RAM (only 2 channels, but who would do that?) - $6978
One with 2 Opteron 2435's - $4565

The more expensive one is 62% more expensive, the lower performing dual channel box 2as 52% more expensive. So both are more expensive than the 40% delta on processor pricing.

For fun I configured an E5540 and that was still 20% more expensive. So I started thinking, where do you get to price parity? Basically that is an E5520. So, from a price perspective, you can get 8 2.26GHz Intel cores for roughly the same cost as AMD's most expensive 12 cores @ 2.6GHz.

Knowing that my most popular SKU is the 2431 (2.4GHz), to get to the same price for an Intel system, you're at the bottom, a 1.86GHz DUAL CORE, so 4 total cores of Nehalem vs. 12 2.4GHz Opteron cores. Oh, and you are still paying a price premium for those 4 cores (~4%).

So, yes, you can point to all types of benchmarks to show you how the top speed xeon parts are fast, but when it comes to pure economics, your choice is a 50-60% premium on the top bin vs our 2435 (to match those benchark charts), or you can try to match the price our our most popular dual socket six core platform, but in trying to match budget dollars, you are going to end up with a pair of 1.86 dual core processors. No turbo, no HT, 4.8GT QPI and only 800MHz memory.

If you check Gartner and IDC you'll see that the average ASP for 2 socket servers is ~$3600. That tells me that there are far more servers being bought in that price band than any others. And at $3600, look at what you get with Intel and what you get with AMD. It's all about value in the data center. Benchmarks are nice, but that is not how the overwhelming majority of servers are bought. I've been in this business for close to 20 years and I have never seen more of a focus on value. We're in exactly the right spot.

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Originally Posted by therightway

No need to get angry or combative. I think it's cool that JF posts in this forum. It's always nice to get someone from inside AMD to post. I wish more executives would do that. As far as the price/performance ratio, obviously you have to take into account price vs performance. If performance is more important, then obviously Nehalem will be a better option. But if it isn't, Opteron presents a very compelling argument. Not every server runs at 100% capacity all the time. Most servers are at like 30% most of the time. If that were the case, Nehalem doesn't present much value beyond Opteron.

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I'm sorry if it looks like I am angry. No, I'm not angry at all.

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Do you really think that servers are even loaded 100% all the time?

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Did I say this? potentialy - please pay attention.

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Funny, mainstream users don't need good graphics and now servers process data all the time without ever being in a state of idle. Any more shareholder quips?

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The first part of your sentence please address someone else, I never said this. For the second part I can say that if you really don't need performance, then again Nehalem servers provides much higher performance/watt value especially when the server spends more time in idle. Until AMD will bring power-gated technology into its processors there is no competition here.

This graphic at Wikipedia shows the big failure that is Itanium (a bit old):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...casts_edit.png


And an very informative article at Arstechnica about the new SPARK and POWER 7 designs:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news...-niagara-3.ars

which of these two were bigger fails? larrabee or itanic?
i mean that in total project cost.

intel is bleeding dollars, from failed tech to antitrust. i would even say they still pay off oems with "marketing" dollars just to keep amd products less appealing technically/aesthetically(keeping amd at budget segments only) or lower volume.

might intel be doing enron-type accounting?

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Originally Posted by wuttz

i would even say they still pay off oems with "marketing" dollars just to keep amd products less appealing technically/aesthetically(keeping amd at budget segments only) or lower volume.

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I think AMD keeps themselves in budget segments. AMD has to beat Intel by quite a bit in performance just to make up brand name ground and they just aren't there right now.

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Originally Posted by kl0012

I'm sorry if it looks like I am angry. No, I'm not angry at all.


Did I say this? potentialy - please pay attention.

The first part of your sentence please address someone else, I never said this. For the second part I can say that if you really don't need performance, then again Nehalem servers provides much higher performance/watt value especially when the server spends more time in idle. Until AMD will bring power-gated technology into its processors there is no competition here.

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are you really really sure you want to start talking about power consumption.... (my dear old friend shintel tried that a few times) there are very good tools for that you know once you work with large OEM's. Review sites are never 100% identical or fail to really match the same load settings etc, OEM don't because they can be sued for that :) and they need to be made available for rack power calculation.

Lets take one of the major players in server world: HP
go to there site and start calculating the power, since they have tools for that:http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s...sor/index.html

Now lets put something together, one of the most sold server is still the INTEL DL380 and AMD DL385 (equal to the dell 29xx series) now lets take a look at power:

config DL380: 2 x QC E5530, 4 x 4GB RAM LP (yes the tri channel is only a marketing hype), P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 148,4W
50% 209,3W
100% 272,3W

config DL385: 2 x HC 2435, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 130,7W
50% 220,8W
100% 314,6W

now lets take the actual retail price equal to E5530:

config DL385: 2 x HC 2431, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 130,7W
50% 214,5W
100% 293,1W


or the low power config

config DL380: 2 x QC L5520, 4 x 4GB RAM LP, P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 15K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 138,6W
50% 190,5W
100% 244,4W

config DL385: 2 x HC 2425HE, 4 x 4GB RAM LP , P410 512mb, 2 x72GB SAS 10K, 2 x 460W power redundant.

idle 126,7W
50% 185,2W
100% 245,9W

conclusion, idle and 50% load AMD is the better pick, only in 100% load the advantage goes to Intel and all equal in the power savings platform (but intel has the clear performance gain here). When AMD launches 4000-6000 series the power consumption will improve more thx to the new c-states, apml 2.0, stepping and soi and ddr3, intel will have to counter that with 32nm.

You are also comparing Intel's 2009 platform to AMD's 2006 platform.

You'll see a lot of innovation around power efficiency in our 2010 platforms.

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

are you really really sure you want to start talking about power consumption....

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Looking at absolute power consumption is not that useful because if that were the case, running an Atom processor as a server would give you the best power bills. You have to look at performance per watt. When you're buying a server, chances you're not just buying one, but multiple servers. If 2 Nehalems can do the work of 3 Opterons, which one would you buy?

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Originally Posted by duploxxx

*snip*
that http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s...sor/index.html
*snip*

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So, Johan, you referred above, is not authority in the measurement of power consumption any more?

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/p...4923/21083.png

And instead of measuring the real power consumption you put some virtual calculator from HP, which somehow believes that the E5530 uses 95W at 100% load (although its TDP is 80W).
But wait ... Wasn't that HP who submited these results:
http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/re...909-00197.html
http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/re...811-00184.html
http://www.spec.org/power_ssj2008/re...407-00143.html

ProLiant DL385 G6 (2.6GHz, AMD Opteron 2435 processor) SPECpower_ssj2008 = 1,394 overall ssj_ops/watt, Active idle = 120W

ProLiant DL360 G6 (2.93GHz, Intel Xeon processor X5570) SPECpower_ssj2008 = 1,586 overall ssj_ops/watt, Active idle = 88.4W

ProLiant DL380 G6 (Xeon L5530) SPECpower_ssj2008 = 2,012 overall ssj_ops/watt, Active idle = 63.7W

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Originally Posted by kl0012

So, Johan, you referred above, is not authority in the measurement of power consumption any more?

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first you talk about idle performance, now you drag spec into it, typical, it is well known (at least if you know a bit in server world that spec ain't just that all to take). And it is for sure known that spec benches favor the hyperthreading a lot when daily workflow is quite a bit different.

And no although i find anandtech reviews quite good, they are in no means able to compare platform power, i will trust my OEM supplier for that, afterall that is what you make rack power calculations on, not some spec or mixed environment like anandtech which is btw not the same baseline i provided.

btw i already told you that the L series intel is the best solution if you go for low power/performance.

and your platforms are not the same, different mem, different discs and most of all different sw used, so unable to compare.

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Originally Posted by wuttz

which of these two were bigger fails? larrabee or itanic?
i mean that in total project cost.

intel is bleeding dollars, from failed tech to antitrust. i would even say they still pay off oems with "marketing" dollars just to keep amd products less appealing technically/aesthetically(keeping amd at budget segments only) or lower volume.

might intel be doing enron-type accounting?

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ze conspiracy... its everywhere.