AMD launches SeaMicro 5TB server

AMD has unveiled an energy-efficient server platform aimed to cater to the needs of enterprises.

The SeaMicro SM15000 server will provide up to 5TB of storage with 64 servers in a single rack unit. AMD claims the platform consumes a quarter of the power of typical servers and takes up sixth of space.

"It is optimised for big data and the cloud, combines the best in class efficiency and bandwidth with fully virtualised storage," said Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager of the Data Center Server Solutions group at AMD said during the unveiling.

AMD will offer various configurations using its own Piledriver core and also Intel's Xeon processors. Each AMD Opteron processor will be able to support 64 gigabytes of DRAM. This will enable a single system to handle 4TB of DRAM and over 16TB of DRAM per rack.

Meanwhile, the Intel-based system will include a quad core 2.5 GHz Xeon processors in a ten rack unit system or 1,024 cores in a standard rack. Each processor will support up to 32GB of memory allowing the system to deliver up to 8TB of DRAM per rack.

AMD hopes the $334 million it splashed out on SeaMicro will help boost revenue as it struggles to deal with falling demand for PCs and laptops.

The firm hopes the energy savings will attract large firms to the architecture, as big data and cloud computing become increasingly important to businesses and extra storage space is needed.