Power-Managed 90-nm Opteron Rolls For Servers

San Jose, Calif. — Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will make its first revenue shipments of 90-nanometer Opteron server processors this week. The chips are AMD's first server CPUs to employ the PowerNow power-saving technology already used on its mobile and desktop processors.

AMD is essentially following archrival Intel Corp., which launched 90-nm Xeon processors with similar power-management technology in July. But AMD plans to spread PowerNow across all its new server CPUs; Intel's technology does not yet appear on its four-way-capable Xeon CPUs.

The move underscores the trend for both companies to integrate features into their new products rather than chase ever-higher clock frequencies. For its part, Intel will pack five new technologies into its processors as selling points, rather than crank out speedier versions. And PowerNow is the main reason OEMs and end users might want the 90-nm AMD chips.

"The frequency path is dead; now you have to add features to the processors," said Pat Patla, marketing director for AMD's server and workstation CPUs.

AMD's 90-nm parts will be offered at essentially the same frequencies, voltages and prices as 130-nm Opertons. The parts will sport a smaller die size and, thus, have lower manufacturing costs.PowerNow can take up to ten 200-MHz steps down in frequency and voltage — either automatically, based on perceived workloads, or by user intervention. Processors can attain a minimum power consumption of 30 W using the technology, down from about 89 W on some CPUs.

PowerNow will be on all 90-nm CPUs of all frequencies, including those geared for workstations as well as single-processor and two- and four-way CPUs. Any Opteron that has shipped since May can also use PowerNow with a BIOS upgrade.

Intel has offered a similar technology, Enhanced SpeedStep, on all its 90-nm Xeons since July. But it still relies on 130-nm parts for four-way-capable server CPUs.

"We did a lot of simulation and testing to arrive at a conclusion that it makes sense to offer [fewer], larger steps that vary by processor," said Jerry Braun, a marketing manager for Intel's Xeon CPUs.

SpeedStep cuts power consumption up to 25 percent for Xeon chips in systems running at about 50 percent utilization, the company said. All Xeons fall below 110 W in maximum power consumption.OEMs must incorporate an updated BIOS, operating-system drivers and management software to make the power-management capabilities from either company's CPUs available to end users.

AMD hopes to gain an edge on Intel in mid-2005, when it fields its first dual-core Opterons. Intel won't ship dual-core Xeons until 2006, although it will roll out a dual-core Itanium sometime next year.

Intel had prepared a quick-to-market dual-core Xeon but decided against shipping the product after simulations showed it would not deliver compelling system-level performance gains compared with a more-optimized dual-core processor design slated for 2006.

The AMD dual-core parts will have "about the same die size" and same pinout as today's 130-nm Opterons, said Patla. That's because the initial Opteron was designed with a crossbar switch and dual-ported system-request interface already onboard. The 90-nm shrink allows room for a second core and 1-Mbit Level 2 cache with minimal net gain in die area.

AMD has not yet commented on expected performance gains or price increases for the dual-core Opteron. But a host of systems software companies, including Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat and Suse, have said they will not levy extra licensing fees for dual-core CPUs, ending worries that software makers might charge for each core. "That's a very major enabler for dual-core," said Patla.Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems all started shipping Opteron-based servers this year, and 30 of the systems on the list of Top 500 supercomputers now use Opterons, Patla said. Broadcom Corp. has said it will ship a family of chip sets for Opteron in the first half.

For its part, Intel is marshaling five new technologies for its processors over the next year, at least three of which may be exclusive to the Intel CPUs. The company already ships dual-threading technology on 50 million processors, a technology AMD said it will not adopt. Intel also hopes to gain an edge with new virtualization technology to create partitioned execution areas in a processor. That feature will appear in Itanium processors starting next year and in Xeon and Pentium CPUs in 2006.

At the Intel Developer Forum in September, the company said it is also preparing a new management technology for out-of-band systems access and management. It's not clear when that capability will become part of its processors, however.

Both AMD and Intel are adopting hardware security technology for their CPUs in tandem with a Microsoft PC security initiative slated for 2006. And the two now support native 64-bit operations. All AMD's Opterons are 64-bit processors, but four-way versions of the Intel Xeon are still 32-bit chips. Pentium processors will not adopt 64-bit capabilities until next year.