Sunnyvale (ip-192.com): AMD's Opteron 4122 is the first 4-core server chip to break the $100 price barrier. The chip is part of AMD’s 4100 family of chips that come in 4- and 6-core variants to power 1 and 2P systems. What the Sunnyvale, California based company calls CoolCore technology makes them suitable for thermally constrained environments. An active sleep state invoked when all processor cores are idle helps to lower energy consumption and makes the 4100 family a good choice for cloud computing and SMB’s, AMD says.
"Until now, customers wanting to build a dense and power-efficient cloud or hyper-scale datacenter had to shoehorn expensive, higher-end solutions into their computing environment, or they had to choose low-power client-based 
designs that may not have offered the right level of performance and server functionality," said Patrick Patla, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD. "With the AMD Opteron 4000 Series platform, these customers now have a server platform that is extremely power and cost-efficient, allows a high degree of customization and is also an ideal solution for high-end embedded systems.’
The Opteron 4122 processor is based on the 45nm processing platform. The top model 4164 uses 133 watts when under load and 63 watts when running idle. This compares to 171 and 83 watts consumed by its predecessor, the 2419. DDR3 memory clocked at speeds up to 1.333 GHz is supported. Most large manufacturers including Acer, Dell, HP, SGI, Supermicro and ZT Systems have indicated that they are interested to develop servers based on the new platform.
"The AMD Opteron 4100 Series processor is ideal for custom-designed servers because it allows for smaller heat sinks, power supplies, and fans, as well as low voltage memory to help improve power efficiency," AMD says in a press release. "Depending on how the system will be used, customization also allows unnecessary, power-consuming features to be eliminated, further driving cost and power efficiency." The 4100 series utilizes the SR5600 chipset, the same as the recently introduced 8- and 12-core processors (ip-192.com reported here). AMD says that it plans to release server processors with up to 16 cores in 2011.
Photo: AMD
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