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AMD president and CEO Hector Ruiz described AMD64 as a 'customer-centric innovation' delivering 'breakout performance'. Beneath the hype, however, is an almost religious belief that what the customer wants is a processor able to bridge the gap between 32-bit and 64-bit computing. Intel's primarily 64-bit Itanium is an entirely different beast, although both attempt to undercut the 64-bit RISC alternatives on price. The big contrast with Opteron, AMD claims, is that it can run your existing 32-bit code faster than anything else out there as well. Spec_int 2000 benchmarks achieved 37 per cent faster scores on a dual 244 than the quickest dual Xeon currently available. RackSaver's four-way 844 managed the highest tpcc score yet of any quad processor system.

Opteron will eventually come in three flavours - 100, 200 and 800 series, intended for single, dual and up to eight-way systems. At launch, however, only the 240, 242 and 244 will be available, although the 840, 842, and 844 will rapidly follow in May. The uniprocessing 144 isn't expected until Q3 of this year. The Opteron sports a massive 105.9 million transistors squeezed into a 193mm2 die using a 130nm process. It has 1MB of L2 cache, and the CPU will draw up to 89W at 1.55V. Standard DDR SDRAM up to PC2700, in either 64-bit or 128-bit format, can be used. The main difference between the three Opteron series is the number of HyperTransport links - 100 has just one, 200 has two, and 800 has three. What's unique about Opteron is that much of the NorthBridge chipset is now on the processor itself, including the memory controller, which is part of the HyperTransport link. AMD claims this means that without an external FSB, the FSB frequency is now essentially the CPU clock speed, although actual Opteron frequencies have

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been obscured by the new model number naming strategy. As HyperTransport also controls how the processors in a multiprocessing configuration talk to each other, the number of links dictates the number of processors which can be combined.

The list of partners on show at the launch seemed extensive. IBM and Microsoft were the stars of the show. Big Blue is planning an Opteron-based server platform, according to eServer vice president Mark Shearer. IBM has also ported DB2 to Opteron, running on 64-bit Windows, and claims it's the first ever 64-bit Windows database. Microsoft will be launching Windows Server 2003 on Thursday with 32-bit support for Opteron, and 64-bit support by the end of the year. Microsoft SQL Server will also support AMD64. Oracle's on board, too, and then there's the Linux community, including Red Hat and Suse.

It's not all about servers, either. JAK Films' Dan Gregoire demonstrated some footage from Star Wars Episode 2, which his company worked on for George Lucas, and pledged to use Opteron systems for future work on the Star Wars franchise. Peter Essens, executive vice president of Fujitsu Siemens, revealed that his company would be using Opterons in a range of graphics workstations.

However, although the strategy looks good on paper - competitive benchmark results, some high profile players pledging support - it was the absences which were more telling. No HP and no Dell, and even IBM and Fujitsu Siemens failed to supply hardware for the partner pavilion where the new Opteron technology was exhibited during the launch. HP had at least sent representatives to the launch who claimed the company was 'still evaluating', but the big hardware vendors still need to back up their vocal support with real products.

AMD claims it will have sold more Opterons than Intel has sold Itaniums since its 64-bit processor arrived some years ago, but that's unlikely to be a hard feat to achieve. AMD's presentation may have been full of bullish phrases like 'Even the paranoid may not survive' and 'We have changed everything', but the proof of the silicon pudding is in the eating. AMD has a doubly hard job ahead - convincing the business community it needs 64-bit, and convincing them they need it from AMD. For all the talk of bridging the gap, AMD64's success still hinges on the 64-bit question, and the jury's still out on that one.