For some time now, AMD has been very aggressive in the microprocessor market. Starting from making the platform power efficient to bringing out next-generation microprocessors to creating brand awareness among the costumers, AMD is focussing on everything that can help the IT industry grow.
Recently, talking to VARIndia, Alok Ohrie, Managing Director of AMD India, provided some perspective on the company’s agenda.
According to Alok, AMD is supporting Green Grid Consortium, which the company had initiated along with other IT majors, including HP, Sun Micro, IBM a year back. The Green Grid is a consortium of information technology companies and professionals seeking to improve energy efficiency in the data centres around the globe. The Green Grid takes a broad-reaching approach to data centre efficiency focussing on data centre “power pillars” that span the gamut of technology, infrastructure and processes present in the today’s data centre environments. The consortium’s focus includes research, standards writing, published studies and continuing education.
Today, the consortium has member companies, including APC, Del, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Cisco, Eaton, EMC, Novel, Vmware, etc.
It may be recalled that AMD has AMD PowerNow! technology for this purpose.
AMD Opteron processors provide exceptional performance-per-watt for servers, and enable increased processing capacity of “rackable” server products, including server blade designs that share common network, power, and cooling components. The addition of AMD’s innovative AMD PowerNow! technology with Optimized Power Management (OPM) strengthens the exceptional performance-per-watt capabilities of the AMD Opteron processor. Not only does AMD PowerNow! technology with OPM provide enhanced power management capabilities, it can also aid in platform investment protection for today’s demanding enterprise server environments by providing less strain on data centre cooling and ventilation systems.
Besides, Alok is also excited about the development on the front of Quad-core. He adds, “We will be launching a quad-core processor, code-named ‘Barcelona’ in H2 this year. We have done a few tests and the initial performance that we have seen is very exciting.”
According to him, this microprocessor can increase the performance by 50 per cent. He adds, “For us, it is native quad-core product, it means it is the grounds-up design and development done by us. The architecture supports all four cores on the same silicon. It is like two dual-core chipset in a single pack and it is the biggest differentiator in the competition.”
He also informs that AMD is talking to the OEM to make the platform ready. According to him, the company will also continue the Dual core processors, but quad-core will remain as the top-most product. This will definitely give a growth path to the x86 platform.
He maintains, “From the roadmap perspective, we will move the technology to the next level of price performance as we go forward. We are also talking about direct connect architecture. It is a path-braking architecture in the microprocessor space. It has helped us drive performance without putting too much of load on the frequency.”
Legacy front-side buses restrict and interrupt the flow of data. Slower data flow means slower system performance. Interrupted data flow means reduced system scalability.
With Direct Connect Architecture, there are no front-side buses. Instead, the processors, memory controller, and I/O are directly connected to the CPU and communicate at CPU speed.
Direct Connect Architecture is available only with AMD64 processors, including the AMD Opteron and AMD Athlon 64 processors, as well as with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology. AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture can improve overall system performance and efficiency by eliminating traditional bottlenecks inherent in legacy architectures.
Finally…
AMD has also launched its much-hyped campaign for consumer buyers, which is called “King of Multi-Tasking”. Alok adds,”“It is an all-in-one 3600 campaign. We have used all the platforms, including TV, magazines, newspapers, etc. for the campaign. We are talking about our offer, telling the users about the product etc.”
