Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD)

AMD 238.40

-5.4%

2:53 PM EST

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: wbmw who wrote (257420)	12/20/2008 3:19:19 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (4) of 275872

re: "AMD is going to be largely disadvantaged in server workloads" - AMD has been the exclusive supplier of servers to Microsoft's "Azure" cloud datacenter in Quincy WA, according to a buddy of mine at MSFT. The reason is their performance for virtualization was 50% better than Intel. MSFT has Intel Nehalem servers being tested but "are still behind current AMD parts by a significant margin" according to this guy. He also said that HP is pushing AMD, not Intel, for database servers, apparently because the "performance per watt" is better, allowing higher densities. I also have been told by a Google exec that Google data centers are almost completely AMD - again because of power density. That does not sound to me like AMD has a large disadvantage in the things that buyers care about. If the very low power shanghai servers promised in 1H09 have good clock rates, Nehalem could be fighting on a different battlefield than they anticipated. Intel also made some very significant changes in cache structure on Nehalem - L2 was reduced from 2MB to 256K per core. That was done to improve 'world switch' times and other cache flush operations, but other workloads are degraded by that choice. Some of my Intel buddies were unhappy with that choice... I think that Nehalem will be a strong part but Intel is just at the first generation of a server chip that supports virtual workloads, nested page tables, and other architectural support for the apps that will be dominating purchasing in the next few years, while AMD is in their third generation of those technologies. A few benchmarks don't tell the whole story on server performance.

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next