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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Petz who wrote (239170)	8/21/2007 6:55:36 PM
From: wbmw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Re: You are just obfuscating here. I am setting out to prove that all Clovertowns NEED to have a HSF that keeps the temperature at 63 and below or they will suffer "noticeable performance loss" -- Intel's words, not mine. The name Intel gives to the 70C solution is irrelevant. No, obfuscation, Petz, I am trying to point out the intention of the specs, which I think is ultimately the relevant subject of this conversation! First of all, I'm not sure why you are fixated on 63C degrees, as if that's an exceptional number. You showed yourself that many Opteron skus use a 67C degree Tcase max, while others are at 72C degrees. That's not a far cry above Intel's specs, and if you exceed this temperature on an Opteron, you will also either see them throttle back or malfunction, as well. (I will also point out that the spec is dated March, 2007, which predates the G-stepping parts, which may in fact be less strict on Tcase max.) My point was that your posts used the Thermal Profile B, which is a special case for the X-series Xeon ONLY, and it only applies to 1U solutions that are volume constrained in terms of the cooling solution. So you are the one pointing out an uncommon case, and making it seem like all Clovertowns are afflicted by the same specifications. Here is what you said: Intel states categorically that a heatsink designed to allow Tcase to reach 70C when dissipating 120w WILL result in "noticeable performance loss due to increased TCC activation [thermal throttling]." Message 23812247 I pointed out to you that this statement was ONLY valid for the Thermal Profile B config, and NOT for the Thermal Profile A config, or for any other Clovertown part that isn't the highest sku X-series part. Moreover, the specification is merely stating that the processor is designed to prevent the Thermal Profile B config from exceeding Tcase of 63C degrees (by way of throttling), so that the cooling solution does not have to. In fact, if you trace down the graph in Figure 6-2, you can see that the Thermal Profile B cooling solution is only good up to 90W, which is obviously going to cause 120W TDP processors to throttle. It specifically states that using the Thermal Profile A "should result in virtually no TCC activation." Re: we've established that Thermal Profile B results in noticeable performance degradation. Don't even go there! No AMD solutions have any performance degradation whatsoever. So what? It's a sall gap. We're talking about the inability to use the 3.0GHz sku in 1U servers without throttling. Going to any of the E-series or L-series parts will work just fine. What is the percentage of the server market that demands top bin performance in a 1U server? AMD says that their "SE" series of Opterons represent 3% of sales. My guess is that Intel's X-series is similar, and almost all of them get used with Thermal Profile A cooling. Re: I did my own calculations of required HSF performance in °C/W because AMD and Intel might have different assumptions about the temp inside the server case. Turns out I was right -- Intel uses 40°C and AMD uses 38°C. There's no magic here, but its clear that keeping Tc below 63 to avoid Intel thermal throttling is a lot more difficult than keeping it below 67-72°C. So comparing AMD's SE series parts to Intel's X series parts, AMD is easier to cool. I understand you here, Petz, and I'm not overly concerned that this is a huge competitive advantage.