AMD Processor Opteron � Serving The Servers
Ever since AMD based in Sunnyvale, California was founded in 1969, its core business has been to provide microprocessor and graphics and media solutions for the computer, communications, and consumer electronics industries. Today with corporate locations at Austin, Texas; and Markham, Ontario, 16,500 employees spread across 80 locations and manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Europe and Asia, AMD's success seems to be driven by what it calls "customer-centric innovation," its guiding principle. AMD claims that it has shipped more than 240 million PC processors worldwide. And that its processors undergo extensive testing to help ensure compatibility with Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, Windows NT, Windows 2000, as well as Linux and other PC operating systems and also conduct rigorous research, development, and validation to help ensure the continued integrity and performance of its products.
Of the various products AMD has on offer such as AMD Athlon, AMD Sempron, AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor,AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor,Mobile AMD Sempron, and AMD Opteron, the focus of this article would be AMD Processor Opteron - the processor which serve the servers. That is, AMD Processor Opteron which is best suited for servers. Generally speaking, AMD Processors due to their higher number of Hyper Transport links and RAM they support, can work in many ways. The model number, that is, the numbers 1, 2 or 3 indicates the compatibility of the model.
Hyper transport links refer to the way in which the links are connected. Every AMD Processor Opteron contains three links. The manner in which the links are connected is shown in the list below:
1 Single-processor only to the Input-Output(I/O) devices. 2 Dual - processor one link is connected to the other processor, and other two links are connected to the Input-Output(I/O) devices. 3 Multi- processor Depends on the motherboard manufacturers design - may be to other processors or to I/O devices. Thus in multi-processor AMD Processor Opteron, the CPUs communicate with one another using the Direct Connect Architecture over high-speed Hyper Transport links as pointed above. Coming to Random Access Memory (RAM), eight DIMMs is the maximum an AMD Processor Opteron can support. and Opteron systems do need registered DIMMs. DIMM incidentally is an acronym for the words Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM), the circuit board which holds the memory chips. The advantage of a DIMM can be appreciated when compared with a Single In-line Memory Module (SIMM) which incidentally has only a 32-bit path to the memory chips in contrast to a DIMM which has a 64- bit path to the memory chips. Registered DIMMs contain embedded registers which enable proper marshalling of data to the processors and circuitry. This helps to spread the incoming signal to the entire memory module. Consequently, registered memory is generally preferred. The latency penalty for accessing the main RAM and the necessity for a separate north bridge chip stands eliminated in the case of an AMD Processor Opteron since it has an integrated DDR SDRAM / DDR2 SDRAM memory controller. When it comes to scaling, the architecture of Opteron processors allows them to fare better in comparison to processors by other companies. The reason for this can found in the switched fabric (unlike the shared bus used in other processors) the AMD Processor Opteron uses. Further, just by adding another AMD Processor Opteron to the existing one, the bandwidth can be increased. These features make AMD Processor Opteron a better choice for servers. Though AMD Processor Opteron are best suited for servers, workstations also can go in for AMD Processor Opteron if more than one processor is needed and the memory need is more than 4 GB.
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