Chicago (IL) – We have to admit that we were pretty impressed with Intel’s 6-core Dunnington launch and Intel’s capability to scale its Core micro-architecture, even if it is somewhat obvious that the technology is nearing its limits. Power consumption levels on the high-end are reaching questionable levels again. It is where Dunnington is most impressive at first sight, but most vulnerable to AMD’s attacks. And besides its high power consumption, AMD claims that the 6-core does not scale very efficiently in terms in performance and that the 45 nm AMD quad-core will be able to surpass Dunnington in speed and power efficiency by the end of this year.
Intel’s 6-core 7400 Xeon MP-series has captured the headlines early this week and that, of course, did not sit well with AMD. AMD has a very different view on the significance of this processor, why it was introduced and what it will do for the market. For Jon Fruehe, worldwide market development manager at AMD, Dunnington is simply a “benchmark chip” to hit the benchmark charts and a “placeholder” until Intel can jump off the FB-DIMM train.
Fruehe told us that it doesn’t really matter that Intel has the first 6-core chip, since it is just a glued-together triple-dual-core processor that has 50% more cores than the quad-core, costs 50% more and delivers just 30% more performance. He claims that the 130 watt thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip won’t make much sense for most consumers and high-performance multi-socket processors anyway represent only 5% of the market. And even Intel’s Tigerton processor has never been as successful as Intel claims, Fruehe said, and the success it had - in terms of market share gains against AMD’s Opteron - was mainly due the fact that AMD’s Barcelona was late to market.
Besides the power problems, Fruehe also believes that Dunnington will run into performance issues, since it does not have an integrated memory controller. On a four-socket, 24-core platform there is only one memory controller, which almost certainly will translate into a bottleneck, he said.
So, does Fruehe have a point? Well, partially and even that depends on your view. But we were surprised that AMD did not attack Intel at the single most glaring vulnerability Dunnington has. While Fruehe noted that Intel’s thermal design power rating has been creeping up a bit over the quad-core (which isn’t entirely fair to say since a 12% increase in power consumption is achieved with 50% more cores), AMD had not noticed that Intel’s 130 watt TDP rating does not indicate the maximum power the chip will consume – it is much more what AMD typically describes as “average power consumption” (55, 75 and 105 watts in its own CPUs, which include the memory controller).
The maximum power consumption of Dunnington is substantially higher – up to 170 watts on the high end, 125 watts in the middle, and 85 and 65 watts on the bottom of the product family. Personally, I am not aware of any other Intel processor that ever had a 170 watt maximum power rating and I would agree with Fruehe that this may not be the processor you would want in any space-constrained server environment. The high-end X7460 could turn out to be a very exotic chip, a technology demonstration if you will.
To be clear, Intel says that the chip may never reach 170 watts in real-world environments. However, the company does concede that the 130 watt TDP may be exceeded occasionally and if that is the case, the case temperature may increase enough to prompt the CPU to reduce its clock speed temporarily (which will reduce the operating temperature and case temperature.) It is clear that Dunnington is stretching the limits of Core.
For the same money of the 170 watt chip, however, you can also buy a 85 watt (maximum power) / 65 watt (TDP) 6-core Dunnington CPU, which is an impressive achievement. At $2729, this is a terribly expensive CPU that may not find too many customers, but if more cores translate into more performance for your applications, this may be a very enticing product.
What it comes down to is choice. AMD can criticize Dunnington all day long; the fact is that the company cannot offer its customers 6-core processors, while Intel can. In environments where more cores are critical, Intel has the advantage at this time and it will be able to maintain its lead over AMD for some time. Fruehe mentioned that the 45 nm quad-core Opteron, code-named Shanghai, will be able to touch or even surpass the performance of Dunnington. The CPU is in production now and will be in volume production in the fourth quarter, Fruehe said. First servers with Shanghai are expected to be available in Q4 as well. However, we do not know how the core-advantage will play out for Intel over time.
AMD is working on a native 6-core processor, code-named Istanbul, which is due for release in H2 2009. Fruehe said that Istanbul will maintain the 55 watt, 75 watt and 105 watt power ratings of the Barcelona/Shanghai quad-core processors.
Intel’s 6-core 7400 Xeon MP-series has captured the headlines early this week and that, of course, did not sit well with AMD. AMD has a very different view on the significance of this processor, why it was introduced and what it will do for the market. For Jon Fruehe, worldwide market development manager at AMD, Dunnington is simply a “benchmark chip” to hit the benchmark charts and a “placeholder” until Intel can jump off the FB-DIMM train.
Fruehe told us that it doesn’t really matter that Intel has the first 6-core chip, since it is just a glued-together triple-dual-core processor that has 50% more cores than the quad-core, costs 50% more and delivers just 30% more performance. He claims that the 130 watt thermal design power (TDP) rating of the chip won’t make much sense for most consumers and high-performance multi-socket processors anyway represent only 5% of the market. And even Intel’s Tigerton processor has never been as successful as Intel claims, Fruehe said, and the success it had - in terms of market share gains against AMD’s Opteron - was mainly due the fact that AMD’s Barcelona was late to market.
Besides the power problems, Fruehe also believes that Dunnington will run into performance issues, since it does not have an integrated memory controller. On a four-socket, 24-core platform there is only one memory controller, which almost certainly will translate into a bottleneck, he said.
So, does Fruehe have a point? Well, partially and even that depends on your view. But we were surprised that AMD did not attack Intel at the single most glaring vulnerability Dunnington has. While Fruehe noted that Intel’s thermal design power rating has been creeping up a bit over the quad-core (which isn’t entirely fair to say since a 12% increase in power consumption is achieved with 50% more cores), AMD had not noticed that Intel’s 130 watt TDP rating does not indicate the maximum power the chip will consume – it is much more what AMD typically describes as “average power consumption” (55, 75 and 105 watts in its own CPUs, which include the memory controller).
The maximum power consumption of Dunnington is substantially higher – up to 170 watts on the high end, 125 watts in the middle, and 85 and 65 watts on the bottom of the product family. Personally, I am not aware of any other Intel processor that ever had a 170 watt maximum power rating and I would agree with Fruehe that this may not be the processor you would want in any space-constrained server environment. The high-end X7460 could turn out to be a very exotic chip, a technology demonstration if you will.
To be clear, Intel says that the chip may never reach 170 watts in real-world environments. However, the company does concede that the 130 watt TDP may be exceeded occasionally and if that is the case, the case temperature may increase enough to prompt the CPU to reduce its clock speed temporarily (which will reduce the operating temperature and case temperature.) It is clear that Dunnington is stretching the limits of Core.
For the same money of the 170 watt chip, however, you can also buy a 85 watt (maximum power) / 65 watt (TDP) 6-core Dunnington CPU, which is an impressive achievement. At $2729, this is a terribly expensive CPU that may not find too many customers, but if more cores translate into more performance for your applications, this may be a very enticing product.
What it comes down to is choice. AMD can criticize Dunnington all day long; the fact is that the company cannot offer its customers 6-core processors, while Intel can. In environments where more cores are critical, Intel has the advantage at this time and it will be able to maintain its lead over AMD for some time. Fruehe mentioned that the 45 nm quad-core Opteron, code-named Shanghai, will be able to touch or even surpass the performance of Dunnington. The CPU is in production now and will be in volume production in the fourth quarter, Fruehe said. First servers with Shanghai are expected to be available in Q4 as well. However, we do not know how the core-advantage will play out for Intel over time.
AMD is working on a native 6-core processor, code-named Istanbul, which is due for release in H2 2009. Fruehe said that Istanbul will maintain the 55 watt, 75 watt and 105 watt power ratings of the Barcelona/Shanghai quad-core processors.