AMD Ships Opteron

NEW YORK -- After nearly a year of hype and development, Advanced Micro Devices has set loose its new 64-bit Opteron processors, designed to attract buyers who seek the power advantages of 64-bit computing but are leery of the costs involved in adopting other 64-bit architectures.

The company surrounded itself with partners at its launch event here Tuesday, including software and hardware vendor IBM, Linux makers SuSE Linux AG and Red Hat, and database leader Oracle. Also attending was Microsoft, which said it is on track to complete by the end of this year an Opteron-tailored version of its forthcoming Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Vendors' Support

IBM offered a major vote of confidence in Opteron Tuesday by announcing it will begin selling in the second half of the year Opteron-based systems in its eServer product line. The company is the first top-tier server vendor to commit to developing around Opteron.

"Today, we're responding to our customers in this space who have been asking us for an IBM solution based on this type of technology," said Mark Shearer, IBM's vice president of eServer systems. "[Opteron] offers compelling performance at a competitive price."

"Industry-standard pricing" was a mantra of AMD executives speaking at the event. Based on the widely supported x86 instruction set, Opteron can run both 64-bit programs and the 32-bit programs prevalent in the industry today. AMD hopes that flexibility will attract customers who have so far avoided more-expensive 64-bit platforms.

While Opteron isn't expected to compete directly with Intel's 64-bit Itanium chips, which are based on a new explicitly parallel instruction computing (EPIC) architecture, AMD nonetheless took some shots at its biggest rival.

"By the end of this year, AMD will sell more AMD 64-bit-based platforms than our competitor has sold since launching its 64-bit platform years ago," said Marty Seyer, general manager and vice president of AMD's microprocessor business unit. "Why will the AMD Opteron processor succeed? Simply put, because we did it right."

Niche Interest

AMD executives emphasized the niche Opteron will fill in offering customers a 64-bit system without requiring them to port existing applications.

"It is time for all of us in the technology industry to change our ways. No new technology without real customer benefits should be tackled," said AMD Chief Executive Officer Hector de J. Ruiz. "The cost of change must be minimized. New technology should not introduce new barriers. It should knock them down."

One customer speaking at the launch, Dan Gregoire of JAK Films in Nicasio, California, said Opteron-powered workstations are being used for development work his company is doing on the forthcoming Star Wars: Episode III movie due in 2005.

"This is a real boon to the effects industry," he said.

Likely early adopters for Opteron include companies in the life sciences and industrial fields, such as pharmaceutical manufacturers, biology researchers, automobile makers, and petroleum firms, said IBM executive Dave Turek, head of the company's newly formed Deep Computing unit. IBM decided to build Opteron servers because of the frequent questions and requests about the technology it was fielding, he said.

"I don't think this will be like a traditional technology introduction, with a slow uptake and migration. I think you'll see a ready-made market that will jump on this pretty aggressively," Turek said.

Many Models

Three models of the Opteron are available at launch: the Opteron 240, 242, and 244. AMD is using a model-rating system for the Opteron processor that uses three numbers. The first number represents the maximum number of processors that can be used in a system with that chip, and the last two numbers the relative performance of that chip.

AMD started the performance numbering at 40 because it thought customers might correlate the last two numbers with the processor's clock speed, and 4-GHz processors are not on the market yet.

In quantities of 1000 units, the Opteron 240 for two-way servers and workstations costs $283, the 242 costs $690, and the 244 costs $794.

The 800 series for eight-way servers will be available later in the second quarter, and the 100 series for one-way servers will be released in the third quarter, AMD said in a release.