Switchfast Blog: The Future of IT
AMD, Intel Unleash New Processors, Look to Power Small Businesses
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by Bryan Anderson
In a week dominated by Apple excitement, let's shift directions
from aesthetic products to speedy advancement. Both AMD and Intel
have jostled this week by introducing their next steps in high
performance processors, and each is deserving of their own place
within the IT industry.
Straight from the AMD newsroom, the company announced the availability of a new server
platform featuring the world's first 8- and 12-core x86 processor
for the high-volume 2P and value 4P server market. According to the
press release, the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform, code named
Magny-Cours, "addresses the unmistakable needs of server customers
today - workload-specific performance, power efficiency, and
overall value - while delivering more cores and more memory for
less money."
Intel has also upped the enterprise-class by launching four new eight-core server
processors, with hopes that it will coax corporations away from
servers using the competing RISC design. Just a day after AMD
announced their new server processors, Intel's chips are part of
the Xeon 7500 series, the latest code named Nehalem-EX.
Both may have been announced this week, but
they are processors going down different marketing roads. Looking
merely at price, Intel's newest assets are more expensive than
AMD's by a large margin. What this shows is Intel's intent with
high-end server marketing which happens to be dominated by IBM, Sun
Microsystems (owned by Oracle), and others in the
industry.
AMD on the other hand has doubled the number of cores with its
latest release while keeping the price effectively low. These
are both signs for potentially cracking a small business
market.
Over at PCworld.com, one article points out that "businesses looking to
consolidate servers, or expand server capacity should take a
serious look at what the new AMD processors have to offer... they
provide an opportunity to do significantly more processing with a
single server, or consolidate a number of existing servers to a
single physical machine."
Another suggested advantage for AMD may be the opportunity to
reduce software licensing costs. The 12-core Opteron chip would
allow certain businesses to cut the number of servers which would
cut licensing costs and server counts.
Although AMD's new product may be a fantastic piece of
technology, the biggest advantage (or benefit) for small businesses
could be the price tag. As previously mentioned, Intel's newest
processors cost anywhere from three times as much, which would
certainly be a caution for cost-conscious businesses.
In the end, make sure to do some research on the performance of
the chips based on how your company would utilize them. Both Intel
and AMD processors vary in performance based on the user
requirements and activity.
Until next time -
Matthew Hymel
Switchfast Technologies
Chicago IT Support &
Consulting
Rochester
IT Support & Consulting
Leave comment: