No Virtual Bridge From Xeon to AMD, Intel Says

VMware customers are getting a bit more freedom in the way they can transfer virtual machines from one Intel-based server to another, but they shouldn't hold their breath waiting for a bridge between Intel and AMD-based systems, an Intel executive said Tuesday.
With its line of Xeon 7400 processors released this week, Intel is enabling customers using VMware's vMotion technology to move virtual machines between two servers even when they are based on different families of Intel chips.
VMotion is VMware's technology for moving running virtual machines onto a different physical server. It's used by some customers for load balancing or for building fault tolerance into applications.
Before the 7400 series, also known as Dunnington, the two servers had to use the same family of Intel chips for vMotion to work, said Doug Fisher, vice president with Intel's Software Solutions group, at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas. With the 7400 and future chip families, that restriction is lifted.
VMware CEO Paul Maritz mentioned the development in his speech at the start of VMworld Tuesday. "Now you'll be able to buy hardware essentially independent of your vMotion strategy," he said.
The compatibility goes back only to the previous processor family, the 7300 "Tigerton" series, and will extend to the next generation, known as Nehalem. "We'll always give at least three generations of compatibility," Fisher said.
Intel made a big deal about the news, but AMD said its Opteron processors have had a similar capability for years. AMD doesn't change the microarchitecture of its processors as frequently as Intel, so compatibility between different Opteron lines is not an issue, said Margaret Lewis, AMD director of commercial solutions.
Customers looking to move virtual workloads between AMD- and Intel-based servers are out of luck, however, at least for the foreseeable future, according to Fisher.
"It's not going to happen," he said on the sidelines after his speech. The companies' chip architectures, while both x86, are too different and change too frequently to be made compatible. "We'd have to slow the pace of innovation to make it happen," he said.
Lewis suggested it was only Intel, not AMD, that changes its architecture frequently. "We'd need to sit down with Intel and VMware and discuss how to make it happen, and we would welcome that discussion," she said.
AMD would stand to gain the most from such compatibility, since it would give companies one less reason to buy Intel-based servers.
Dunnington is a six-core processor with a larger, 16M byte Level 3 cache to boost performance. VMware CTO Steve Herrod said VMware will keep its per-socket pricing the same for Dunnington, "so customers can get more virtual machines per processor" without paying more in licenses.
It was one of several ways Fisher said Intel is working with silicon to usher in a "second wave" of virtualization. The first wave was using the technology for server consolidation and building virtual environments for software testing, and the second is to use it for load balancing, high availability and disaster recovery.
Citing IDC figures, he said that in 2007 about 12 percent of all servers in production were using virtualization, up from 8 percent in 2006 and 4 percent the year before. Virtualized servers run at 52 percent capacity on average, he said, compared to 10 percent to 15 percent for non-virtualized systems.
VMworld continues through Thursday।
Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/151163/.html?tk=rss_news

Intel unveils new chip design to challenge AMD

SAN FRANCISCO - Intel Corp। cracked the lid Tuesday on a new chip design that is at once a big challenge to smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and an admission that AMD nailed a key design feature before it slipped into a severe financial slump.

Intel, the world's largest computer chip maker, showed off the new blueprint, known as a microarchitecture, for its chips at a developers conference in San Francisco.
Though some of the details were already known, the design's formal unveiling represented another demonstration of Intel's advantage over AMD in cranking out new chip designs once every two years, a factor that helped send AMD's stock price down 5 percent in an overall down day for technology shares.
AMD has racked up nearly $5 billion in losses during the past 18 months and last month replaced Hector Ruiz, who had been running AMD for six years, with a new chief executive, Dirk Meyer.
The details of Intel's microprocessor architecture are always highly technical. But they're also closely watched because of the ubiquity of Intel's chips in personal computers and corporate servers.
One of the most significant changes was already known. Intel now plans to build a part called an integrated memory controller — which moves information between the microprocessor and the computer's memory — directly into the processor itself.
That's a key change because processors are asked to do more and more, and any lag in communication can seriously hurt performance. AMD has already been incorporating integrated memory controllers into its processors.
Because of that and other tweaks, Intel said its new design, which is code-named Nehalem, will triple the speed at which data can be written to memory or read back, compared to previous generations. Intel says Nehalem also will have nearly double the 3-D animation capabilities as past chips, and better utilize the multiple "cores," or processing engines, on each chip.
Chip makers are adding multiple cores to their chips, essentially jamming many separate processors onto the same slice of silicon, to make sure they're able to continue ramping up performance without running into overheating problems.
Intel said four-core Nehalem chips, which are due to be in production by the end of 2008 and will first target servers and desktop computers and later laptops, have the ability to turn individual cores on and off and can be programmed to boost the speed of active cores when the workload ramps up.
Intel shares fell 39 cents, or 1।6 percent, to $23.62. AMD shares fell 31 cents, or 5.3 percent, to $5.60.

Reference : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080819/ap_on_hi_te/tec_intel_developers

AMD and Mauritius Sign Deal for Low-cost PCs

In an effort to help bridge the digital divide, Advanced Micro Devices will sell 100,000 low-cost PCs in Mauritius, said Imi Mosaheb, AMD's sales and marketing manager for South Africa.
"As from the end of September, a first batch of low-cost PCs will probably be put on the market, if everything goes as planned," Mosaheb announced at the opening of Infotech 2008, an annual IT event held in Pailles, Mauritius.
The Mauritius Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications and AMD signed a memorandum of understanding pertaining to the project on Wednesday.
The deal aims to bring down the price of computers (including CPU, keyboard, screen and mouse) to below 10,000 Mauritius rupees (US$383). A PC in Mauritius currently costs at least double that price.
AMD will supply processors, graphic cards and other components, while local manufacturers will assemble the PCs. AMD's local partner, Leal Communications & Informatics, will play a crucial role in the assembly process.
The PCs are meant for those who cannot otherwise afford a computer, said IT and Telecommunications Minister Etienne Sinatambou at Infotech. But bringing down prices alone isn't enough to bridge the digital divide, and several loan plans will further help those who need it most, he added.
The Mauritius government is also working establishing the National e-Inclusion Foundation to help bridge the gap। This public-private partnership between the government and such companies as Microsoft Indian Ocean plans to donate at least 20,000 refurbished PCs to low-income families within the next five years and an additional 10,000 to nongovernment organizations. The foundation will also contribute to the establishment of IT academies.
Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/article/149576/2008/08/.html?tk=rss_news

AMD Jumps to 12-core Chip, Skips 8-core Chip Plans

Advanced Micro Devices plans to release processors with 12 cores, which changes its product road map and kills earlier plans to release 8-core chips.
The 12-core processor, code-named Magny-Cours, will be targeted at servers and is due for release in the first half of 2010, according to the company's updated road map announced Wednesday.
The chip will include 12M bytes of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM, according to the road map.
AMD is jumping from a 6-core chip code-named Istanbul, due for release in the second half of 2009, straight to a 12-core chip the following year, an AMD spokesman said.
Until last month, AMD officials repeated plans to ship the 8-core server chip, code-named Barcelona, in 2009. Montreal has now been replaced by Istanbul, followed by a 12-core product in 2010, the spokesman said
Twelve-core chips will handle larger workloads better than 8-core chips and are easier to manufacture, said Randy Allen, vice president and general manager at AMD, during a conference call.
AMD is also planning to release a 6-core chip code-named Sao Paulo in 2010. The chip will include 6M bytes of L3 cache and support for DDR3 RAM. Sao Paulo chips could meet the need of systems that don't require 12 cores, Allen said.
The new chips will be more power efficient as they will be manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, an upgrade from the 65-nm process currently used to manufacture Barcelona.
AMD, which is struggling financially, is making financial and technical considerations in jumping from 6-core to 12-core chips. said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research. That should allow the company to dump more cores on chips while delivering better product margins and lowering manufacturing costs.
AMD's 12-core chip will include two 6-core processors on separate chips in a single processor package, McCarron said. That is a more realistic goal than including 12 cores on a single chip, which can be expensive to manufacture, McCarron said.
The shift also allows AMD to avoid competition with Intel in 8-core chips, McCarron said. Intel is shipping a 6-core Xeon server processor, Dunnington, in the second half this year, after which it plans to jump to 8-core processors.
Even with AMD's altered road map, Intel will remain formidable. Intel shipped 78.5 percent of chips in the first quarter of 2008, while AMD held a 20.6 percent market share, a slight gain from the 18.7 percent market share it held in the first quarter of 2007.
The new product road map is a way for AMD to bounce back from recent chip and supply issues, said Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor at Illuminata.
AMD's most recent server chips, the quad-core Opteron processors code-named Barcelona, started shipping late last month after multiple delays and bugs.
"Obviously, AMD had some missteps over the past year, but they have a staple of OEMs and routes to markets with their processors. What you're seeing is much more public focus on what's going to happen in the next 18 to 24 months rather than longer term," Haff said.
AMD has had a string of recent problems. The company last month reported its sixth consecutive quarterly loss and plans to lay off 1,650 jobs by the third quarter.
Reference : http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145608/amd_jumps_to_12core_chip_skips_8core_chip_plans.html