AMD launches 16-core chips for cloudy goodness

AMD has launched its first 16-core Opteron chips, designed with cloud servers in mind.

It has been a long wait for the chips, which contain more cores than any other x86 chips on the market today, as the industry has known about them for a year now.

With more cores on board, AMD is hoping cloud-focused manufacturers will jump on the new chips, which the vendor believes are the "natural choice for heavy-threaded cloud computing environments."

The wait for the most anticipated new product and architecture for servers is over.

Designed on AMD's new Bulldozer architecture, the Opteron 6200 will appear in Acer, Cray, Dell, HP and IBM servers in the "coming days and weeks," the vendor said.

There are 10 different models of the Opteron 6200, ranging from four cores to 16, with the maximum clock speed hitting 3.3GHz. AMD's Turbo CORE Technology allows for an extra power boost of up to 500MHz.

AMD claimed the new chips offered up to 89 per cent greater performance than other server processors costing the same price.

"Our industry is at a new juncture; virtualisation has provided a new level of reliable consolidation and businesses are now looking to the cloud for even more agility and efficiency. We designed the new AMD Opteron processor for this precise moment," said Paul Struhsaker, corporate vice president and general manager for Commercial Business, AMD.

"The wait for the most anticipated new product and architecture for servers is over. Leading OEMs are now offering cloud, enterprise and HPC customers a full suite of solutions based on the industry's most comprehensive server processor portfolio, the new AMD Opteron family of processors which deliver an inspired balance of performance, scalability and efficiency."

The chip maker is looking to make a big impact on the x86 market, which Intel still dominates. Much emphasis has gone on the power savings of the Opteron models.

"When these energy efficient processors are used in servers, the server power savings can be dramatic as much as a 20 per cent reduction in server active idle power and an 18 per cent increase in server performance-per-watt," said Andy Parma, a product marketing manager for at AMD, in a blog post.

AMD also announced its new Opteron 4200 chips, claiming it is the "world's lowest power-per-core server processor built to deliver unparalleled efficiency for complex, technical workloads."

There are eight different models for the Opteron 4200 design, with a top clock speed of 3.3GHz. Customers can choose between six and eight-core models.