AMD Bulldozer server info

[JF-AMD]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

[cky2k6]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

How on Earth am I talking about 2p systems? What I am talking about is one chip. AMD has 12 and 16 core mcm chips coming out for server, but not desktop. This is what the discussion is about, we stopped trying to convince you about c32 long ago. Make a 1p g34 desktop board with a 1366 lineup of chips ($300, $500, $1000), and you have yourself an answer to intel's high end.

[-Boris-]

How on Earth am I talking about 2p systems? What I am talking about is one chip. AMD has 12 and 16 core mcm chips coming out for server, but not desktop. This is what the discussion is about, we stopped trying to convince you about c32 long ago. Make a 1p g34 desktop board with a 1366 lineup of chips ($300, $500, $1000), and you have yourself an answer to intel's high end.

You understand that MCMs have a much lower frequency right? Per thread it would be much slower, that means that it would be slower in games. The extra threads you get won't matter to most people. People on workstations that need more threads than 8 won't buy FX-chips anyway.

People didn't buy FX for cinebench, the bought them because of game performance and overclocking. An MCM would be worse at both.

An MCM would have a harder time competing with intels high end at these types of workloads than an ordinary bulldozer.

[cky2k6]

You understand that MCMs have a much lower frequency right? Per thread it would be much slower, that means that it would be slower in games. The extra threads you get won't matter to most people. People on workstations that need more threads than 8 won't buy FX-chips anyway.

People didn't buy FX for cinebench, the bought them because of game performance and overclocking. An MCM would be worse at both.

An MCM would have a harder time competing with intels high end at these types of workloads than an ordinary bulldozer.

Intel's core 2 quads were mcm chips and clocked quite well. Doesn't mean that bulldozers will be similar, but mcm doesn't necessarily mean poor clocks.

[-Boris-]

Intel's core 2 quads were mcm chips and clocked quite well. Doesn't mean that bulldozers will be similar, but mcm doesn't necessarily mean poor clocks.

But they were released at significantly lowered clocks, and that was on a power efficient chip. In a time when real quads actually were possible. An mcm-quad with chips capable of a real quads isn't that hard. BD would use way to much power to be used in any high clocked MCMs. Besides, the difference between 2 and 4 cores is much bigger than the difference between 8 and 16 cores in games.

So, the best comparision should be with magny cours, that's chips that are made at the edge of their TDP range, and chips with many cores. And the frequency differences between these MCMs and SCMs are big.

Magny Cours at 2.3GHz is 140W. Six core Opteron manages 2.8GHz at 95W. Phenom II X6 manages 3.3GHz at 125W. 3.4 - 3.5GHz would be possible within the 140W TDP. But let's be on the safe side and say that without MCM you can get at least 1GHz further. I think it's safe to say that similar differences will be seen between MCM BD and SCM BD.

In other words, BD MCMs would be useful to worksation and server loads only.

[JF-AMD]

LOLL epic quote


did you see how large the die is for magny cours???? i expect a big die for the mcm 16 core interlagos cpu ... so i dont expect high clocks to remain in the tdp region they aimed

Interlagos dies will be smaller than MC.

Now all we need is some rearrangement of PCB, throw a couple of PCIe 16x, FX with 5,6,8 modules and OC BIOS.
Is that to much to ask?

Rearranging the board is no problem, but that is not my world, we make chips not boards. You're talking about ~$100K to do a 1P board.

However, you won't get an OC BIOS. Opteron does not overclock, it is locked. If you want to overclock, you should use Phenom.

[slaveondope]

However, you won't get an OC BIOS. Opteron does not overclock, it is locked. If you want to overclock, you should use Phenom.

By no overclock, you mean by way of fsb(htt) because of hyper transport between the chips not functioning properly when raised or do you simply mean no unlocked multi's?

[SQjay]

However, you won't get an OC BIOS. Opteron does not overclock, it is locked. If you want to overclock, you should use Phenom.

Well if I remember correctly Stephen had some ES MC with unlocket multy so I see no problem with making unlocked G34 BD under FX brand.

The BIOS only needs this OC options: vCore, vDIMM, multy for CPU&NB and dividers/timings for RAM.
I think even that a lot of current 2P MBOs have these options (my Tyan S2915 has) but only in the basic scale.

FYI, Opterons were the best OC CPUs in AMDs lineup!
My 2376s can go up to 250MHz HTT without any adjustements (multy/dividers).

[Fatfool]

Rearranging the board is no problem, but that is not my world, we make chips not boards. You're talking about ~$100K to do a 1P board.

You make chipsets too don't you? (okay maybe not your department but the company in general)

But selling more processors is nice too isn't it? Let's say the current Lisbon and Thuban are similar in price to manufacture and are sold at similar price points, wouldn't it make sense to try to flog say two 150-200 dollar (current Thubans and a number of Lisbons are priced there) processors and a board with your chipset at 30-50% higher prices than 1P boards? AMD could use the mindshare to move up the performance graphs too. I mean, people do pay for 300-400 dollar intel processors are 300 dollar X58 odd boards don't they? (let's ignore the extreme series)

How about doing that with bulldozer? That seems a very typical enthusiast kind of price to pay?


By the way, who pays if a manufacturer like Asus or MSI come out with their own layout? Always been curious about that one.

[jmm5351]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

where I went to high school everybody had sex

[STEvil]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

I've got 3 duals.

[Sn0wm@n]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

LOLL epic quote

Intel's core 2 quads were mcm chips and clocked quite well. Doesn't mean that bulldozers will be similar, but mcm doesn't necessarily mean poor clocks.

did you see how large the die is for magny cours???? i expect a big die for the mcm 16 core interlagos cpu ... so i dont expect high clocks to remain in the tdp region they aimed

[SQjay]

I believe that people talking about something like this JF:



Now all we need is some rearrangement of PCB, throw a couple of PCIe 16x, FX with 5,6,8 modules and OC BIOS.
Is that to much to ask?

[Fatfool]

If dual proc client systems are so great, why is it that everyone that says we are missing the market has a single proc desktop in their sig. Yes, why do you have a Core i7 920 3849B028 if the intel 2P systems are our there and so great?

Dual proc client systems are like sex in high school. Everyone talks about it but nobody is really doing it.

Because... let's see, they've usually been too expensive? It wasn't as if you just doubled the processor cost and you were good to go.

You'd have to get registered memory (or FB in the current Xeons) and pay out of the ass for the 2P capable processors and pay out the ass again for a 2P motherboard and perhaps case (because many of them are SSI or E-ATX)

But the affordable 2P desktop/workstation enthusiast market has appeared several times like the ABIT BP6 (dual celerons), Asus PC-DL (875P chipset, dual P4 Xeons, non buffered memory), Athlon XP/MP (with the mod where you paint across the cut) and yes, your current Lisbon processors, it's actually made sense.

QuadFX and Skulltrail made absolutely no sense as they're vanity projects, still keep all the expensive parts The FX-74 was a joke at 500 USD a piece as that put it up against the QX6700. Skulltrail uses standard 'pay outta your ass' Xeons with FB memory.


Now, the screwed up thing was that both the asus board and MSI board are late despite having paper launches months back and with sandy bridge stealing all the thunder, you'll have a hard time comparing a ridiculously expensive i7 980x against say two 4180s or two 4184s. Of course, lack of marketing has hampered awareness...