In the current economic environment, data-center managers are under more pressure than ever to reduce costs without having to compromise on the latest features or performance, noted Patrick Patla, general manager of AMD 's server and workstation business.

"The new quad-core AMD Opteron HE series processor offers unrivaled performance per watt and cost efficiencies for a wide range of configurations without a potential front-side-bus bottleneck," Patla said.

Lower Idle Power

Featuring clock speeds from 2.1 to 2.3 GHz, AMD's Opteron HE processors address the business computing market's need to maximize performance during peak periods while managing energy costs during idle and low-utilization hours. Server platforms based on the new 45nm chips can offer up to 20 percent lower idle power compared to similarly configured systems from rival chipmakers, AMD said.

Opteron HE chips are available now in server offerings from Dell, Hewlett-Packard , Rackable Systems, and Sun Microsystems. Moreover, AMD's 2.8-GHz Opteron SE processors are available in three new systems from HP as well as from other AMD technology partners.

Opteron HE processors aim to improve data-center energy efficiencies while AMD's 45nm Opteron SE chips are designed for the highest raw-computing environments, said John Fruehe, AMD's director of business development for server/workstation products.

"We are even bringing a new feature to the market called AMD PowerCap manager that will allow IT data-center managers to set predefined maximum limits for the processor's clock speed and voltage," Fruehe said. "Because many workloads tend to be spiky in nature, the need to run at the highest clock speed is often only for a cycle or two."

Smoothing the Peaks

AMD's power-capping technology helps smooth out the peaks, maintaining a better overall average power. "In fact, AMD PowerCap manager can reduce server-processor power consumption by up to 63 percent," Fruehe said. "And our AMD CoolCore technology -- which lets you turn off unused parts of the processor -- is now extended to include L3 cache." (continued...)

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