AMD has plenty of Quad Opterons.....

[jimmysmitty]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=AMD:US&sid=aBF4QsMs2lf0

This story interested me at work today.

The Xtreme-X3 supercomputer consists of a total of 674 quad-socket, Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processor-based compute nodes with 2,696 processors and a total of 10,784 processing cores.

I wounder how they got so many out and if they are B2 or B3. If B2 this might not be that great of an idea as throwing so much data through might cause the TLB bug to rear its ugly head.

This also might be why AMD stopped shipments of Opterons. To fill this need instead.....

 

[ryman554]

That's not a whole bunch.

Let's take a fairly conservative view of 50 working Opeterons per wafer. Thats ~50+ wafers of Opeterons. Thats a whopping 2+ lots of WIP. 2 lots.

If AMD is having trouble starting more than two lots of Opterons a day.....

 

[zenmaster]

Wow! 2,696 Processors.

Hopefully AMD can crank out that many in a couple hours or less.
I certainly HOPE that does not effect stock by any means.

 

[jimmysmitty]

This much is true. If they sold 100 of these it would = 269,600 Quad Opterons. As far as I remember the Optys got stop shipped until B3 to fix the TLB since servers move a lot of data.

So unless AMD has B3 and is pushing them out without telling anyone thats a lot of CPUs to be sold that are stop shipped.

 

[jedimasterben]

Wow, I'd kill for just one of those!

 

[skittle]

Wow, I'd kill for just one of those!

I would rather kill for a intel setup. x264 encoding is killing my measly X2

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

K10 Optys are being sold exclusivly to customers that are not greatly affected by the TLB bug.

So it would make sense to sell a large amount a chips to someone who wasn't affected by the bug. It would be too costly to sell to a bunch of small customers and work with them to see if they're affected.

That's what happens when you make buggy products!

 

[endyen]

K10 Optys are being sold exclusivly to customers that are not greatly affected by the TLB bug.

So it would make sense to sell a large amount a chips to someone who wasn't affected by the bug. It would be too costly to sell to a bunch of small customers and work with them to see if they're affected.

That's what happens when you make buggy products!

So mr coordinator, how many erratta does the average intel chip have?
The most logical reason for all the fuss about a simple erratta is fear it might be exploitable in a DDoS attack.
Not the kind of problem you'd expect from an erratta. AMD did the smart thing, and responded as soon as they could, under the circumstances.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

So mr coordinator, how many erratta does the average intel chip have?
The most logical reason for all the fuss about a simple erratta is fear it might be exploitable in a DDoS attack.
Not the kind of problem you'd expect from an erratta. AMD did the smart thing, and responded as soon as they could, under the circumstances.

Mr. Endyen,

That's my point, AMD's processor is so buggy that it had to be recalled and only shipped to select customers not affected by their buggy processors. It's not like you can disagree with me, it's simply a fact. AMD is the one that initiated the stop-ship and recall.

Yes, all processors have errata, just not typically this bad. What's even worse is the timing; this comes when AMD can't afford to make mistakes, yet they keep making mistake after mistake.

Even Baron has given up defending AMD. I remember how Baron kept saying 3ghz K10's by the end of 2007, now I just look back and chuckle at how he kept BSing this forum by pumping information based on nothing but his hopes and dreams.

 

[croc]

So mr coordinator, how many erratta does the average intel chip have?
The most logical reason for all the fuss about a simple erratta is fear it might be exploitable in a DDoS attack.
Not the kind of problem you'd expect from an erratta. AMD did the smart thing, and responded as soon as they could, under the circumstances.

No, the most LOGICAL reason is that with this erratum, various systems using virtual servers / multiple sessions / multiple threads might be affected. Hence the stop ship.

 

[croc]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=AMD:US&sid=aBF4QsMs2lf0

This story interested me at work today.

The Xtreme-X3 supercomputer consists of a total of 674 quad-socket, Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processor-based compute nodes with 2,696 processors and a total of 10,784 processing cores.

I wounder how they got so many out and if they are B2 or B3. If B2 this might not be that great of an idea as throwing so much data through might cause the TLB bug to rear its ugly head.

This also might be why AMD stopped shipments of Opterons. To fill this need instead.....

www.top500.org

Good site...

 

[mi1ez]

It's got nothing to do with the number of errata, just the manner of them, and AMD seemingly had a major issue with the TLB errata.

 

[sonoran]

AMD is the one that initiated the stop-ship and recall.

I'll leave it to people more in-the-know than myself to decide if there should have been a recall or not (?), but I don't believe AMD has issued a recall? If they did, I missed it.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

AMD issued a stop-ship on K10 based Opterons in the channel and pulled back anything that didn't make it to an end consumer.

http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13721


This is confirmed by the fact that you couldn't buy a K10 based Opteron if you wanted to.

 

[jimmysmitty]

So TC you think that this "Supercomputer" being used constantly and having data thrown through it constantlyand more than likely having to use a lot of cache wont have any chance of the TLB surfacing?

I think that it is possible since it will be the center of their University. Maybe not but still.

Well guess we will see where this goes.

 

[TechnologyCoordinator]

So TC you think that this "Supercomputer" being used constantly and having data thrown through it constantlyand more than likely having to use a lot of cache wont have any chance of the TLB surfacing?

I think that it is possible since it will be the center of their University. Maybe not but still.

Well guess we will see where this goes.

I would guess they're not using virtualization, which seems to be a key condition for the TLB bug. That's why they're only shipping to large customers that are probably running a linux OS without virtualization.

Makes sense. They can't sell them to the mass market because of the bug, but if someone can buy them and not be affected, why not!? I'm sure they got a discount on the defective goods though.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I would hope so. If AMD tried to sell them at the real price after recalling them and it haveing a bug that has a potential of showing would be wrong.

Kinda like if you bought a car knowing the engine was blown for the full resale price. Just can't do it.

 

[Amiga500]

I would guess they're not using virtualization, which seems to be a key condition for the TLB bug. That's why they're only shipping to large customers that are probably running a linux OS without virtualization.

They aren't - they will be using linux/unix based OS - all clusters do.



AMD have already released a statement saying Opterons have been and are still shipping to pre-contracted sites (like this one) where the TLB bug will not be an issue.

 

[einheriar]

Wow, I'd kill for just one of those!

I'm jealous of the electricity bill aswell..

 

[endyen]

Wow! 2,696 Processors.

Hopefully AMD can crank out that many in a couple hours or less.
I certainly HOPE that does not effect stock by any means.

Hmm, yes well...
It may take longer than a couple of hours, but it wont be the only thing the fab will be doing @ that time.
AMD claims to have high yields, but much of that is due to binning. If those are top of the heep chips (top binned), AMD would be happy to get 25 or 30 on a wafer. They would probably hope to get another ~ 125 lower binned (phenom quad, tri and dual core) saleable chips from each wafer.
Wafers are usually run in "batches" of 25. It would take about 4 batches to produce those chips,
Amd is doing ~ 12000 wafer starts per month (WSPM), or about 15 batch starts a day.
Not too long right? Well no, but to go through the process takes a bit of time as well.
From batch start to finish testing takes about 90 days. That's without any package yet.
Oh, btw, the raw wafers used to make those opterons? Cost AMD $250000 before they even start them.