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AMD officially launches Opteron
NEW YORK - After months of hype and expectation, Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday officially launched its Opteron processor, complete with a ringing hardware endorsement from IBM. By Jennifer Mears, Network World Fusion 
The IBM backing is good news for AMD, which is positioning the 32/64-bit chip to compete against Intel. The chip uses the x86 instruction set with 64-bit extensions so that it can run 32- and 64-bit applications simultaneously, a departure from the path Intel has taken with its 64-bit Itanium processor. Itanium runs 32-bit applications, but with performance degradation. "We believe that Opteron provides customers with a natural evolutionary path from today's industry-standard 32-bit environment, empowering them to gracefully migrate their 32-bit systems into the 64-bit world," Mark Shearer, vice president of IBM's eServer Systems, said during AMD's press conference in New York. Supporters at the press conference also included companies such as Computer Associates, Microsoft and Fujitsu Siemens. Microsoft had already announced it would support the Opteron chip with Windows Server 2003, and IBM last summer ported its DB2 database software to Opteron. Opteron processors for two-way servers are available now, and processors for up to eight-way servers will be available later in this quarter. One-way server processors are expected to ship in third quarter. AMD has priced the processors on par with Intel's 32-bit Xeon chips. "IBM believes that Opteron offers compelling performance at an affordable price," Shearer said in announcing IBM's plans to deliver an Opteron-based server platform. Shearer also says IBM will make Opteron technology available in its supercomputing-on-demand service, which gives customers access to powerful supercomputer clusters on a pay-as-you-go basis. "IBM's support is a big win for AMD," says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. Haff noted that IBM didn't announce a specific product, "but they certainly had a lot of nice things to say about Opteron… It shows pretty convincingly that IBM is very much in the Opteron camp, and it's probably also indicative of IBM further cooling to Itanium." Buyers will be waiting to see systems where they can "kick the tires," he says. Already, several second-tier systems vendors such as Penguin Computing and Racksaver have announced they will use the processor. Jamie Gruener, an analyst with the Yankee Group, says the IBM support is important, but the key will be how Opteron is used in corporate data centers. "Intel for better or worse took an active interest in the system-level architecture in what they were going to provide. It's not clear that AMD has put the same thought process in place to deal with the issue. It's a system-level approach. You don't buy processors if you're an end user; you buy a server," he says. "But this could validate the fact that you don't have to follow the Intel train if this actually works," he adds. "A lot of us are going to be watching it very closely."
The IBM backing is good news for AMD, which is positioning the 32/64-bit chip to compete against Intel. The chip uses the x86 instruction set with 64-bit extensions so that it can run 32- and 64-bit applications simultaneously, a departure from the path Intel has taken with its 64-bit Itanium processor. Itanium runs 32-bit applications, but with performance degradation. "We believe that Opteron provides customers with a natural evolutionary path from today's industry-standard 32-bit environment, empowering them to gracefully migrate their 32-bit systems into the 64-bit world," Mark Shearer, vice president of IBM's eServer Systems, said during AMD's press conference in New York. Supporters at the press conference also included companies such as Computer Associates, Microsoft and Fujitsu Siemens. Microsoft had already announced it would support the Opteron chip with Windows Server 2003, and IBM last summer ported its DB2 database software to Opteron. Opteron processors for two-way servers are available now, and processors for up to eight-way servers will be available later in this quarter. One-way server processors are expected to ship in third quarter. AMD has priced the processors on par with Intel's 32-bit Xeon chips. "IBM believes that Opteron offers compelling performance at an affordable price," Shearer said in announcing IBM's plans to deliver an Opteron-based server platform. Shearer also says IBM will make Opteron technology available in its supercomputing-on-demand service, which gives customers access to powerful supercomputer clusters on a pay-as-you-go basis. "IBM's support is a big win for AMD," says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. Haff noted that IBM didn't announce a specific product, "but they certainly had a lot of nice things to say about Opteron… It shows pretty convincingly that IBM is very much in the Opteron camp, and it's probably also indicative of IBM further cooling to Itanium." Buyers will be waiting to see systems where they can "kick the tires," he says. Already, several second-tier systems vendors such as Penguin Computing and Racksaver have announced they will use the processor. Jamie Gruener, an analyst with the Yankee Group, says the IBM support is important, but the key will be how Opteron is used in corporate data centers. "Intel for better or worse took an active interest in the system-level architecture in what they were going to provide. It's not clear that AMD has put the same thought process in place to deal with the issue. It's a system-level approach. You don't buy processors if you're an end user; you buy a server," he says. "But this could validate the fact that you don't have to follow the Intel train if this actually works," he adds. "A lot of us are going to be watching it very closely." 
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