AMD: the world's first 12-core processor has begun shipping

[Movieman]

between Hexa-Core Gulftown and mission critical Tulsa (I hope I've hit codename), Beckton with it's special requirements for FB-DIMM 2, and complicated/expensive mobos is dead-end project of long ago departed Pat Gelsinger... only thing that's keeping him alive is the fact that Intel doesn't want to make another Larrabee announcement in such a short time-span!

Investing so much resources in a complete spin-off product like Beckton for disproportionately big 4-socket market is nonsense, that might have worked before Economy breakdown, but not anymore!

but who would no... if Intel is so desperate for 4S product... they just might do something so unreasonable as Beckton launch!

point is what ever they do, I don't see a reason for AMD to talk about it, or spread rumors 'cos MC and Maranello as a unified long term platform that can enable 1/2/4S is far more appealing, and affordable for server builders

Beckton is DDR3-1066.. I have a pdf here showing some of the upcoming boards but would get my backside spanked if I showed it..

[terrace215]

AMD's TDP = max power

105W ACP = 137W TDP. It is the max TDP for the Opteron lineup.

Well, AMD TDP is actually: TDP. Thermal Design Power. The thermal design power is the maximum power a processor can
draw for a thermally significant period while running commercially useful software.


3. The processor thermal solution should be designed to accommodate thermal design power (TDP) at
Tcase,max. TDP is measured under the conditions of all cores operating at CPU COF, Tcase
Max, and VDD at the voltage requested by the processor. TDP includes all power dissipated on-die
from VDD, VDDNB, VDDIO, VLDT, VTT and VDDA. TDP is not the maximum power of the
processor.



http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/43374.pdf

Pure max power would be even higher.

And ACP... is just something marketing made up because they thought the TDPs didn't look so good.

But by listing a number as just "wattage" or "power" in the usual places, they are getting sites to fall for it, and assume it is TDP. Bravo?

[terrace215]

point is what ever they do, I don't see a reason for AMD to talk about it

And you can bet that when beckton benchmarks are out, AMD *won't* talk about it. At all.

[demonkevy666]

As a former member of the failed QuadFX platform, I would say it was ASUS's fault the platform failed. BUT AMD could have helped keep it going. The CPUs were already there, just renamed to FX series. Asus launched a board that had TONS of upswing if it had been maintained. Only 3 processors released for it.. 3.. And we paid what.. 299 apiece for them (FX70s here). When the quad cores came out, asus just let it fall apart. There was an AMD based chipset designed and built (at least one anyways) It never ever saw the light of day.
After much complaining by its customers Asus finally gave us a Quad Core capable motherboard in the form of the WS /B. It will run barcelonas, but not Shanghai's. Tyan gave us the -E series motherboards that run Quad and Hex cores now. Once again, Asus had the opportunity to latch on to some more market share. Let's call that board the KFN32-D SL /SH. Shanghai capable. ASUS even has a section for it on their website with a bios release.. but guess what we don't have.. a motherboard.

Even MSI has a couple boards out there that run Quads. The Speedster series. But MSI has given very limited support on them. The only reason the Speedster2 is in the US is because a member of 2CPU went to MSI directly and got boards imported over. But it is already EOL'd the day after it came out.

If AMD wanted us to have an enthusiast level 2S platform, we would have one already, made by somebody...
Intel made their own ie Skulltrail.

I have owned every AMD multicpu capable platform since the 760MPX days. I fear that Socket F will be my last at least through the G34 series. I am just not seeing any motherboards out there that would fit my requirement of multiple video cards. And SLI is dead on AMD workstation boards. That does not help either.

Bottom line: Until AMD asks it's board makers to come up with something for us, they wont. The new AMD SR chipsets are a goldmine. CrossfireX boards in an ATX size are easily doable.

the asus board was the only 680a board ( really two 560a together) anyone with those got left hug out to dry.
the second was fasn8te board which was never made.

EVGA said they're waiting for new architecture from AMD, since nv780a was late to market and they don't have experience with am3 now.

someone needs to tell them socket G34 will support new architecture from AMD. (bulldozer)

[Movieman]

And you can bet that when beckton benchmarks are out, AMD *won't* talk about it. At all.

In the work that I do my westmere is out putting a dual socket beckton system and from the benches I saw the MC at 2992 in S7's screen shot is so damned close to my westmere at 3458 that it's '6 to 5 and pick 'em"
Let's not be so sure of things until we see for ourselves ok?
My gut is telling me this MC system is better than people are thinking it will be.

[annihilat0r]

while running commercially useful software

lol, I wonder if they added that "commercially useful" phrase after the Furmark Fail of 4800s?

[Nedjo]

Beckton is DDR3-1066.. I have a pdf here showing some of the upcoming boards but would get my backside spanked if I showed it..

thanks for pointing that out!
please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there long ago some info about Becton using FB DIMMs?
Oh! thanx for Google:

And you can bet that when beckton benchmarks are out, AMD *won't* talk about it. At all.

That I'm not excluding, but it sure has no interest to talk about it now, as would that article suggest

[Movieman]

thanks for pointing that out!
please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there long ago some info about Becton using FB DIMMs?
Oh! thanx for Google:





That I'm not excluding, but it sure has no interest to talk about it now, as would that article suggest

Your correct, there was, key word is "was"
Buffer is on the board, memory is DDR3-1066..

[SEA]

Well, AMD TDP is actually: [i] TDP. Thermal Design Power. The thermal design power is the maximum power a processor can
draw for a thermally significant period while running commercially useful software.

http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/43374.pdf

Pure max power would be even higher.

The pure max power is only needed for main board engineers to design circuits capable to provide that peak power within micro and milliseconds.
But in continuous run TDP means max power consumed: if processor dissipates 125 watt an hour - it consumes exactly same electrical power.

[duploxxx]

You might have to read the whole article, not just the excerpt.

Unless I'm mistaken, this thread has many posts about Beckton vs Mangy.

And the correlation might be even stronger than that.

Intel is more focussed on releasing 6core 32nm at the same time AMD will launch G34 then beckton... perhaps they might tip that up as a paper launch. beckton sampling yes since nov 2009 but very limited amount and certainly not mass delivery for oem yet while MC already is and no they are not corelated unless you count the DP 65xx series 6510 1.7ghz 4core, 6540 2.0 6 core, 6550 2.0 8 core not that earth shattering is it, lets see how many OEM really are going to adopt that part .... that is creating another platform you know... 1P + 2P neh // 2P beck // 4p + 8P beck

anyhow 1.5 weeks from now and i know exact when we can expect becky, what flavors and positioning

[SEA]

Oh I think my previous post was not clear enough. So:

TDP is maximal thermal power that process can emit.
And that means, that in continuous run TDP is maximum electrical power that processor can consume.

[JF-AMD]

Beckton is DDR3-1066.. I have a pdf here showing some of the upcoming boards but would get my backside spanked if I showed it..

Yes, it is DDR3 1066, but every memory channel has a buffer chip ON THE BOARD! That means all the mess of FB DIMM with more power and more cost, except the cost comes at the board level, not the DIMM level. But, I guess if you are going to pay that much for a processor, you'd have no problem dropping the extra coin on the board.

I heard someone refer to beckton as "Itanium III" this past week. Feels fitting.

[JF-AMD]

And ACP... is just something marketing made up because they thought the TDPs didn't look so good.

No, that is not correct.

And if you want to put a Magny Cours up against a Beckton plugged into power meters to see who pulls more real power at the wall, just let me know where you want me to bring the server.

We just did a power demo for the industry analysts this week and one of the best things I heard was that they were blown away at how little power 12 cores can consume.

[JF-AMD]

Oh I think my previous post was not clear enough. So:

TDP is maximal thermal power that process can emit.
And that means, that in continuous run TDP is maximum electrical power that processor can consume.

Here is the rough equivalent.

Intel:
Average power = TDP
Max power = Maximum power

AMD:
Average power = ACP
Max power = TDP

To give you an idea, the 95W TDP of the Nehalem X5570 is overshadowed by the 155W max power: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/I...602X5570).html

I am being gracious by not calling out the 197W peak.

[JF-AMD]

And you can bet that when beckton benchmarks are out, AMD *won't* talk about it. At all.

We'll talk about our two favorite benchmarks:

SPEC Power
SPEC Wallet

I think Beckton might score some new records there. But not in the way they were hoping.

[Movieman]

Yes, it is DDR3 1066, but every memory channel has a buffer chip ON THE BOARD! That means all the mess of FB DIMM with more power and more cost, except the cost comes at the board level, not the DIMM level. But, I guess if you are going to pay that much for a processor, you'd have no problem dropping the extra coin on the board.

I heard someone refer to beckton as "Itanium III" this past week. Feels fitting.

Correct on all points. I heard that also.. Not so sure if it's a true analogy but personally I always called Itanium , Itanic..
Never understood where they were going with that line over all those years but assumed they knew more than I did..

[Otis11]

In the work that I do my westmere is out putting a dual socket beckton system and from the benches I saw the MC at 2992 in S7's screen shot is so damned close to my westmere at 3458 that it's '6 to 5 and pick 'em"
Let's not be so sure of things until we see for ourselves ok?
My gut is telling me this MC system is better than people are thinking it will be.

Is that because you know something or because you forgot to take your fiber?

[SocketMan]

Correct on all points. I heard that also.. Not so sure if it's a true analogy but personally I always called Itanium , Itanic..
Never understood where they were going with that line over all those years but assumed they knew more than I did..

It (the "Unobtanium" program) keeps HP "on board", and "aligned" with the "program" among many other "wonders".

[Shadov]

Here is the rough equivalent.

Intel:
Average power = TDP
Max power = Maximum power

AMD:
Average power = ACP
Max power = TDP

To give you an idea, the 95W TDP of the Nehalem X5570 is overshadowed by the 155W max power: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/I...602X5570).html

I am being gracious by not calling out the 197W peak.

JF one simple but very important question:

Why isnt AMD adopting the same TDP definition as Intel?

Marketing wise you seem more power hungry and sorry for putting it this way, but compared to the blue company you dont have as many resources to explain the difference to every company and potential customer.

Furthermore the same problem crosses over to desktop CPU's where consumers are even less aware of the difference between AMD 125 Wat TDP and Intels 95 Wat TDP. The second one seems simply as the better solution given the current market situation ...

[Movieman]

Is that because you know something or because you forgot to take your fiber?

Excuse me folks while I get out my hammer and send my friend Otis here on a long vacation!

It's a feeling based on numbers I've seen.
MC looks to be the real deal.
Better than Westmere in some ways, a tiny and I mean tiny bit behind in others.
Thats why I said 6 to 5 and pick'em.
Now if I could get S7 to answer his damned cell phone maybe I'd have more info!

[JF-AMD]

JF one simple but very important question:

Why isnt AMD adopting the same TDP definition as Intel?

Marketing wise you seem more power hungry and sorry for putting it this way, but compared to the blue company you dont have as many resources to explain the difference to every company and potential customer.

Furthermore the same problem crosses over to desktop CPU's where consumers are even less aware of the difference between AMD 125 Wat TDP and Intels 95 Wat TDP. The second one seems simply as the better solution given the current market situation ...

OK, let me try to walk through the history of power.

Intel has throttling, we do not. If their chip gets too hot, it throttles back. So, to some degree, power and performance is linked. We will have that feature in the future.

In the old days, Intel used a derate of max power to determine TDP. That was ~80% (so, theoretically, a 100W max power part would have a TDP of 80W). This is exactly how it was described by Intel engineers when I worked for an Intel-based OEM (so don't flame me on that description.)

When we brought out first parts out, they had a TDP of 95W. However, the problem was that in the worst case scenario, you'd never see more than 50W of power (heavily FP-incluenced HPC.) The way to measure max power is to run something called a "thermal virus" that basically fires up all transistors at the same time, stressing the chip in a way no real workload could.

The problem that we faced was that we were 95W and customers were provisioning their racks expecting that level of power, and it was generally in the low to mid 40's (half the power consumption.) So their racks were running inefficiently with more headroom and less density - that is bad because it eats up floor space.

So, after working with customers for a long time, the overwhelming demand was "tell us what the REAL power is, not the 'design to' power."

ACP was born.

We take several server benchmarks and run them at 100% utilization and measure power at the CPU, that becomes the ACP.

So a 115 TDP, nets a 75W ACP. And the typical customer is seeing power consumption in the low 50's. So ACP is still conservative, but closer to reality.

The real problem was that Intel had roughly 110W TDP parts in that timeframe and they were getting beaten, bad, by AMD in the power area. So, when you have a TDP of 110W and your competitor is at 95W, what do you do? You change the derate from ~80% to ~65%. Voila, lower TDPs.

The reality is, at the wall, until Nehalem, intel was soundly behind AMD in power. In today's world, in the "at the wall" benchmarking that we have seen, the standard power parts are about equal at idle, and they are higher at full load.

But the problem for them is that the power ramp is huge. If we go from idle to ~3% utilization, we jump a watt or two. They jump 10% (they have spent more time working on idle and that can cause the big ramp up.)

So why don't we just use the same measurement as Intel? Two reasons:

1. The architectures are different, and that is not a fair comparison, it favors them.
2. They have a history of changing the definition of things to suit their needs, so if we went to match exactly what they were doing, they could just change their measurement to suit their needs.

I always tell customers to ignore TDP and ACP. What really matters is TOTAL PLATFORM POWER at the wall. I believe that we have the advantage here.

I just came out of the lab last week and saw the new Magny Cours is pulling basically the same power as a 6-core istanbul. Twice the cores, massive performance increase and rougly the same power. Actually, at some utilization levels it is actually lower.

I can't speak to client power, I am a server guy.

[JF-AMD]

It (the "Unobtanium" program) keeps HP "on board", and "aligned" with the "program" among many other "wonders".

I'll take the counter on that argument.

HP has Intel by the nose on this one. They are 85%+ of all of the itanium sales and they have the control in this situation.

I would guess that it is more likely that HP can pressure Intel to keep itanium alive by holding its x86 business over Intel's head.

I have no idea what happens inside either of their walls, but if HP dropped itanium, intel could save a ton of money on keeping that product alive.

Why is intel pushing so hard on beckton, which will sit right on top of itanium? Probably because they want out of itanium and need an escape path. If Itanium was so strategic, it would be on their leading edge technology, but it is later than everything else, the cadence has slowed down (how many years was tukwila late), they use their old process (65nm) and they don't really pick up volume on that platform. It is life support a this point.



The reality is the market has spoken on 64-bit volume technnology. It will be x86, not EPIC.