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.