Q3'05 AMD Roadmap; DDR2 and New Sockets for AMD

Server and Workstation Processors

Not much has changed in the server and workstation segment other than the actual launch and availability of the dual core Opterons. Here's what we have looking at the present and near future.

We've separated the 8xx, 2xx, and 1xx Opteron models into their individual parts for a reason. While older Opterons all targeted socket 940, AMD is apparently moving the 1xx models towards socket 939. The most likely reason is for price/performance advantages of the platform, or perhaps that yields of the newer parts have reached the point where everything works in two socket or higher configurations. 152 is the last single socket Opteron appearing on the roadmap, though determined single socket 940 holdouts can always drop in the more expensive 2xx parts if they want.

Looking at the future, the only new Opterons coming out will be the single core x54 models. As we just mentioned, 154 will actually be a socket 939 part (along with the now available 165, 170, and 175). The switch to socket 939 also means that the 154 will use the San Diego core rather than the Venus core that previous 1xx 90nm parts have been based off. 254 and 854 will also exist, and we must admit we're a little surprised - several of us were surprised to see the x52 models. Almost any application that can take advantage of SMP will perform better on two 265 cores than on two 254 cores, but AMD apparently has received enough requests for another single core Opteron model that the x54 parts are being made. The price of the 254/854 parts is identical to that of the 265/865 parts, however, so the parts are essentially being rated as equivalent. Users that have applications that depend more on pure clock speed rather than multiple threads are the likely target of the x54 parts. The socket 939 154 part is priced the same as the FX-57, and actually costs more than the 254, so single socket 940 users shouldn't fret too much. The 939 152 is also priced the same as the FX-55, while the 940 152 is substantially cheaper.

Besides the various Opteron models most of you have probably seen before, we also included the HE models. HE stands for "High Efficiency" and the efficiency we're talking about is performance per Watt. Where the standard Opterons have a TDP of 95W, the HE models are only 55W. You basically give up two bins of performance for the lower TDP, however, so the 865 HE costs as much as the 875 and the 850 HE costs as much as the 865. They also max out at two levels below the fastest models, which isn't too surprising.

Looking to the future of Opterons, the current roadmap doesn't contain any information about what's planned. DDR2 is in the works for all the other markets, so it would make sense for Opteron to eventually move that way as well. However, there have been difficulties in the past with getting ECC and registered memory to work with DDR2, so perhaps Opterons will move to FB-DIMMs (Fully Buffered DIMMS) instead. We do know that AMD has something in the works called socket F, a 1207 pin socket for future Opterons, but we don't know what type of RAM is used. That transition is likely more than a year off, but we'll let you know as soon as we get any clearer picture of what AMD has planned.

Final Thoughts

Echoing what we said in our last AMD roadmap, there aren't a whole lot of speed increases showing up on the future roadmaps. FX-59 will add another 200 MHz to the fastest AMD processor in terms of clock speed, and we can guess that the X2 5000+ will do the same. Again there is another low clock X2 coming up that we can't talk about just now, but fortunately you won't have to wait too long for details on that processor to emerge. Rather than focusing on increasing raw clock speed, AMD and Intel have both shifted to improving the features of their various chips. Dual core was the first step in that direction, and quad core (or maybe tri core) is a likely evolution at some point. 65nm processors are also on the horizon, and likely AMD will begin releasing the first such processors just beyond the range of the present roadmap - i.e. in late 2006 or early 2007. The process shrink should bring improved clock speeds as well as more cores per die. The increasing numbers of mobile parts are another indication of the changing goals. We may not be able to get much faster without spending significant effort, but we can try to focus on making the current designs more portable at the very least. We'll take a look at the Intel roadmap in the near future, but the trends are similar to what we see with AMD.