AMD boosts Opteron server range

By Alun Williams

Posted on 14 Feb 2005 at 13:29

AMD has added two- and eight-way server processors to the 64-bit Opteron range. It claims the Model 252 and 852 processors now represent 'the world's highest performing processors' for servers and workstations.

Part of the announcement includes AMD chipset support for PCI-Express I/O, in the form of the AMD-8132 HyperTransport PCI-X 2.0 tunnel. The latest addition to the AMD-8000 series of chipsets is should ship for servers and workstations this month.

Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM and Sun are among those who are lining up to use the new processors. In terms of availability, the Models 852 and 252 should be supplied to AMD's partners within 30 days, with volume shipments of the machines following before the Spring. The 852 is priced at $1,514 and the 252 is priced at $851 based on 1,000-unit quantities.

'These models of the AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture bring the newest level of performance to our customers,' claimed Marty Seyer, general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit. 'The platforms our partners launched today feature the world's highest performing 4P and 2P processors for 32- and 64-bit computing.'

Other features of the new high power chips include a 1GHz bus speed to increase HyperTransport performance, and support for Streaming SIMD Extensions 3 (SSE3) SSE3 software instructions.