AMD Launches Low-Power 40-Watt Opteron EE

By Jane McEntegart
published

AMD celebrates Earth Day with low-powered Opteron chip.

AMD today announced what the company is calling a full featured energy miser: a low powered 40-watt version of the quad-core Opteron processor, called the Opteron EE, which is designed specifically for dense server environments like cloud computing. With clock speeds of 2.1GHz and 2.3GHz, the EE surpasses AMD’s 55-watt Opteron HE as the company’s lowest power server chip.

Gina Longoria, Senior Product Manager at AMD, explained in an interview earlier this week that while important, performance is no longer the be all and end all when it comes to servers. As it stands, those in the server business are calling for performance along with a certain level of efficiency and low power consumption.

Along with AMD’s V-suite of virtualization technologies, the chips also incorporate what AMD is calling its P-series, a set of power-saving tools that allow users to tweak the chips to better suit their individual needs. This includes the option to turn off cores and caches that aren’t being used, the ability to set a maximum thermal state in the BIOS.

The news comes at a particularly turbulent time for AMD. While all looks rosy on what is the 6th anniversary of the Opteron processor, not to mention Earth Day, and the launch of the EE chip, the company is still busy with restructuring costs and cutbacks. Click here for all the gory details. Click here for the more on the 40-watt Opteron from AMD's blog.

Jane McEntegart
8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • has any one heard anything about the fusion cloud ?
    Reply
  • 40w is pretty sexy, if I were so inclined, I'd build a 2p workstation with 2 of those.
    Reply
  • hellwig
    I like AMD, but how does this new 40W Opteron compare to a 65W Xeon performance wise? The Atom has shown us that overall low power doesn't actually mean less power used for a specific task, though server chips don't tend to have idle times like a desktop or notebook.
    Reply
  • Jerky_san
    I wish AMD would make a new laptop processor.. The turion is pretty old now and they need some competition against intel in it.. Also I wish they would make another low powered dual core with the new 45nm tech.. if they can get 45 watts and 2.5 ghz out of a dual core on 65nm and on a quad they can get down to 40w i wonder how low they can go with a dual..
    Reply
  • kittle
    I wonder what these things cost.

    I upgrded my old opteron 2xx chips a while back and wanted to get the low power version. Aparently low power also means 3x the price. a dual core 2.6ghz chip was $280. a dual core low power 2.6 ghz chip was $800 -- thats per CPU and i have 2 sockets. For the $1040 difference in price I can pay power bills for a long time.
    Reply
  • Area51
    This is absolutely stupid.
    If you are talking about virtualization environments then you know that VM/Watt, VM/$, VM/Space are the most important thing. In that is the case then this product is worthless since it cannot handle the same benefits as the new Xeon 5500 does. If you are talking about HPC, then again Performance / Watt is all that matters and in that case AGAIN this CPU is not worth purchasing since it lowers the performance of everything else in your platform that you paid for and you need more of everything to get the same number of MIPS and that would cost you more in power and purchase price. Now with cloud computing it’s all about performance/$ and Guess what AMD? NO Go for Little Green since the same as above applies here. You need to do a better job of marketing with some real numbers behind it if you actually want people to consider you as a solution. Show me how much it would cost me in Power and $ to get a certain performance level and how that is better than the latest from your competition. Otherwise PLEASE don’t make statements that makes you lose all hope in your company.
    Reply
  • judeh101
    40watts. That's pretty impressive, low power is always good, but is it worth it? like performance to watt ratio.
    Reply
  • neiroatopelcc
    Area51This is absolutely stupid.If you are talking about virtualization environments then you know that VM/Watt, VM/$, VM/Space are the most important thing. In that is the case then this product is worthless since it cannot handle the same benefits as the new Xeon 5500 does. If you are talking about HPC, then again Performance / Watt is all that matters and in that case AGAIN this CPU is not worth purchasing since it lowers the performance of everything else in your platform that you paid for and you need more of everything to get the same number of MIPS and that would cost you more in power and purchase price. Now with cloud computing it’s all about performance/$ and Guess what AMD? NO Go for Little Green since the same as above applies here. You need to do a better job of marketing with some real numbers behind it if you actually want people to consider you as a solution. Show me how much it would cost me in Power and $ to get a certain performance level and how that is better than the latest from your competition. Otherwise PLEASE don’t make statements that makes you lose all hope in your company.I'd love to replace our old optys in our esx servers with these!
    The only resource our esx'es get even close to running out of is memory. There's more than ample processing power available for our needs.
    Reply