Opteron
The Opteron is AMD's x86 server processor line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64). It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core (K8) and was intended to compete in the server market, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor. Processors based on the K10 microarchitecture were announced on September 10, 2007 featuring a new quad-core configuration.
Technical description
The two key capabilities
Opteron combines two important capabilities in a single processor die:
- native execution of legacy x86 32-bit applications without speed penalties
- native execution of x86-64 64-bit applications (linear-addressing beyond 4 GiB RAM)
The first capability is notable because at the time of Opteron's introduction, the only other 64-bit processor architecture marketed with 32-bit x86 compatibility (Intel's Itanium) ran x86 legacy-applications only with significant speed degradation. The second capability, by itself, is less noteworthy, as all major RISC players (Sun SPARC, DEC Alpha, HP PA-RISC, IBM POWER, SGI MIPS, etc.) have had 64-bit implementations for many years. In combining these two capabilities, however, the Opteron has earned recognition for its ability to run the vast installed base of x86 applications economically, while simultaneously offering an upgrade-path to 64-bit computing.
The Opteron processor possesses an integrated DDR SDRAM / DDR2 SDRAM (Socket AM2/F) memory controller. This both reduces the latency penalty for accessing the main RAM and eliminates the need for a separate northbridge chip.
Multi-processor features
In multi-processor systems (more than one Opteron on a single motherboard), the CPUs communicate using the Direct Connect Architecture over high-speed HyperTransport links. Each CPU can access the main memory of another processor, transparent to the programmer. The Opteron approach to multi-processing is not the same as standard symmetric multiprocessing as instead of having one bank of memory for all CPUs, each CPU has its own memory. The Opteron CPU directly supports up to an 8-way configuration, which can be found in mid-level servers. Enterprise-level servers use additional (and expensive) routing chips to support more than 8 CPUs per box.
In a variety of computing benchmarks, the Opteron architecture has demonstrated better multi-processor scaling than the Intel Xeon[citation needed]. This is primarily because adding an additional Opteron processor increases bandwidth, while that is not always the case for Xeon systems, and the fact that the Opterons use a switched fabric, rather than a shared bus. In particular, the Opteron's integrated memory controller, when using Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA), allows the CPU to access local RAM quickly. In contrast, multiprocessor Xeon system CPUs share only two common buses for both processor-processor and processor-memory communication. As the number of CPUs increases in a Xeon system, contention for the shared bus causes computing efficiency to drop.
Multi-core Opterons
In May of 2005, AMD introduced its first "Multi-Core" Opteron CPUs. At the present time, the term "Multi-Core" at AMD in practice means "dual-core"; each physical Opteron chip actually contains two separate processor cores. This effectively doubles the computing-power available to each motherboard processor socket. One socket can now deliver the performance of two processors, two sockets can deliver the performance of four processors, and so on. Since motherboard costs go up dramatically as the number of CPU sockets increases, multicore CPUs now allow much higher performing systems to be built with more affordable motherboards.
AMD's model number scheme has changed somewhat in light of its new multicore lineup. At the time of its introduction, AMD's fastest multicore Opteron was the model 875, with two cores running at 2.2 GHz each. AMD's fastest single-core Opteron at this time was the model 252, with one core running at 2.6 GHz. For multithreaded applications, the model 875 would be much faster than the model 252, but for single threaded applications the model 252 would perform faster.
Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors are offered in three series: the 1200 Series (up to 1P/2-core), the 2200 Series (up to 2P/4-core), and the 8200 Series (4P/8-core to 8P/16-core). The 1200 Series is built on AMD's new Socket AM2. The 2200 Series and 8200 Series are built on AMD's new Socket F (1207).
AMD is expected to launch quad core[1] Opteron chips in August 2007 [2] with hardware vendors to follow suit with servers in the following month. Based on a core design codenamed Barcelona, new power and thermal management techniques are planned for the chips. Existing dual core DDR2 based platforms will be upgradeable to quad core chips[3].
Socket 939
AMD has also released Socket 939 Opterons, reducing the cost of motherboards for low-end servers and workstations. Except for the fact they have 1MiB L2 Cache (versus 512KiB for the Athlon64) the Socket 939 Opterons are identical to the San Diego and Toledo core Athlon 64s, but are run at lower clockspeeds than the cores are capable of, making them more stable. Since this means that they overclock very well, they were popular and in great demand.[citation needed] They are also the only dual core Socket 939 processors still easily available now that the Athlon 64 X2s for that platform have been discontinued. [1]
Socket AM2
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Socket AM2 Opterons are available for servers that will only have a single-chip setup. These chips may prove to be as successful as the previous generation socket 939 Opterons due to the Opteron's overclockability. Codenamed Santa Ana, dual core AM2 Opterons feature 2×1 MiB L2 cache, unlike the majority of their Athlon 64 X2 cousins which feature 2x512 KiB L2 cache.
Socket F (1207)
Socket F (1207) is AMD’s second generation of Opteron processors (codename Santa Rosa, Barcelona and Shanghai) the “Lidded Land Grid Array” socket adds support for DDR2 SDRAM, quad core processors,(see ‘Multi-core Opterons’ above) improved HyperTransport connectivity and Virtualization (AMD-V™) Physically the socket and processor package are nearly identical, although not generally compatible with socket 1207 FX
Micro-architecture update
The Opteron line is saw a update with the implementation of the AMD K10 microarchitecture. New processors, launched in the third quarter of 2007, incorporate a variety of improvements, particularly in memory prefetching, speculative loads, SIMD execution and branch prediction, yielding an appreciable performance improvement over K8-based Opterons, within the same power envelope.[4]
In the mean time, AMD has also utilized a new scheme to tell power consumption of new processors under "average" daily usage,
named Average CPU Power (ACP), which the rating itself is similar to what Intel measures TDP values for their Pentium and Core 2 lines of processors, measuring the power consumption of
high workloads instead of the TDP value (AMD claimed to be the maximum power the processor to be achieved and is for system
engineers' references only) which in numbers are slightly lower than the TDP value of the same processor. AMD claims the ACP
rating includes the power consumption when running several benchmarks, like
Models
First generation single-core Opterons follow the three-digit "Opteron xyy" model numbers and the newer generations (all dual cores) are four-digit in the form "Opteron xnyy".[8]
The first digit (the x) specifies the maximum number of CPUs on the target machine:
- 1 - Designed for uniprocessor systems
- 2 - Designed for dual-processor systems
- 8 - Designed for systems with 4 or 8 processors
The n digit is the release number (omitted in first release). The major differences between release one and release two include different socket type (socket 940 vs. socket F), single-core vs. dual core, quad-core upgradeability, support for DDR1 vs. DDR2 memory and for AMD Virtualization.
The last two digits in the model number (the yy) give an indication of the relative performance comparison among models of the processors.
Models with a HE label refers to a low-power deviative with lower TDP value, while products with an SE label refers to a high performance processor with higher TDP values.
Opteron (130 nm SOI)
- Single-core — SledgeHammer (1yy, 2yy, 8yy)
- CPU-Steppings: B3, C0, CG
- L1-Cache: 64 + 64 KiB (Data + Instructions)
- L2-Cache: 1024 KiB, fullspeed
- MMX, Extended
3DNow! , SSE, SSE2, AMD64 - Socket 940, 800 MHz HyperTransport
- Registered DDR SDRAM required, ECC possible
- VCore: 1.50V - 1.55V
- First Release: April 22, 2003 [2]
- Clockrate: 1400 - 2400 MHz (x40 - x50)
Opteron (90 nm SOI, DDR)
- Single-core — Venus (1yy), Troy (2yy), Athens (8yy)
- CPU-Steppings: E4
- L1-Cache: 64 + 64 KiB (Data + Instructions)
- L2-Cache: 1024 KiB, fullspeed
- MMX, Extended
3DNow! , SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64 - Socket 940, 800 MHz HyperTransport
- Socket 939/Socket 940, 1000 MHz HyperTransport
- Registered DDR SDRAM required for socket 940, ECC possible
- VCore: 1.35V - 1.4V
- NX Bit
- Optimized Power Management (OPM)
- First Release: February 14, 2005
- Clockrate: 1600 - 3000 MHz (x42 - x56)
- Dual-core — Denmark (1yy), Italy (2yy), Egypt (8yy)
- CPU-Steppings: E1, E6
- ...
- Socket 939/Socket 940, 1000 MHz HyperTransport
- ...
- NX bit
Opteron (90 nm SOI, DDR2)
- Dual-core — Santa Ana (12yy), Santa Rosa (22yy, 82yy)
- CPU-Steppings: F_
- L1-Cache: 64 + 64 KiB (Data + Instructions)
- L2-Cache: 2*1024 KiB, fullspeed
- MMX, Extended
3DNow! , SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64 - Socket F, ??? MHz HyperTransport - Opteron 2yy, 8yy
- Socket AM2, ??? MHz HyperTransport - Opteron 1yy
- VCore: ??????
- NX Bit
- Optimized Power Management (OPM)
- First Release: ?????? 2006
- Clockrate: ???? - ???? MHz (xn?? - xn??)
Opteron (65 nm SOI)
- Quad-core — Budapest (13yy) [9], Barcelona (23yy, 83yy)
- CPU-Steppings: BA
- L1-Cache: 64 + 64 KiB (Data + Instructions) per core
- L2-Cache: 512 KiB, fullspeed per core
- L3-Cache: 2048 KiB, shared
- MMX, Extended
3DNow! , SSE, SSE2, SSE3, AMD64, SSE4a - Socket F, ? GHz HyperTransport 3.0
- Registered DDR2 SDRAM required, ECC possible
- Split power plane dynamic power management
- VCore: 1.2 V
- First Release: September 10, 2007
- Clockrate: 1700 - 2000 MHz
x86 competitors
- Intel Xeon 5100 (and derivatives based on the Core Microarchitecture such as Core 2)
Supercomputers
On the Nov 2006 TOP500 list, 22.6% of the worlds fastest known 500 supercomputer installations were AMD64 Opteron-based systems, while 21.6% were Intel EM64T/Intel 64 Xeon-based.
Supercomputers based on Opteron mentioned in the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world:
- #2: Sandia National Laboratories. Machine: Cray Red Storm XT3. CPU: 26,544 Dual-Core Opteron (2.4 GHz). Rpeak: 101.4 TeraFlops.
- #9: TSUBAME Grid Cluster, GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Machine: Sun Fire X4600 Cluster. CPU: 10,368 Opteron (2.4/2.6 GHz). Connection: Infiniband. Main Memory: 21248 GiB, Rpeak: 47.38 TeraFlops.
- #10: Jaguar - Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Cray XT3, 2.6 GHz 10,424 Dual Core Opteron.
Opteron without Optimized Power Management
AMD has released some Opteron processors without Optimized Power Management(OPM) support, which use DDR1 memory.The following table describes those processors lacking OPM.
| Max P-State Frequency |
Min P-State Frequency |
Model | Package-Socket | Core # | Manufacturing Process |
Part Number(OPN) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1400 MHz | N/A | 140 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA140CEP5AT |
| 1400 MHz | N/A | 240 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA240CEP5AU |
| 1400 MHz | N/A | 840 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA840CEP5AV |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 142 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA142CEP5AT |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 242 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA242CEP5AU |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 842 | Socket 940 | 1 | 130 nm | OSA842CEP5AV |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 242 | Socket 940 | 1 | 90 nm | OSA242FAA5BL |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 842 | Socket 940 | 1 | 90 nm | OSA842FAA5BM |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 260 | Socket 940 | 2 | 90 nm | OSK260FAA6CB |
| 1600 MHz | N/A | 860 | Socket 940 | 2 | 90 nm | OSK860FAA6CC |
Opteron recall
AMD has recalled some E4 stepping-revision single-core Opteron processors, including x52 (2.6 GHz) and x54 (2.8 GHz) models which use DDR1 memory. The following table describes affected processors, as they are listed in AMD Opteron x52 and x54 Production Notice.[10]
| Max P-State Frequency |
Uni-Processor | Dual Processor | Multi-Processor | Package-Socket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2600 MHz | 152 | 252 | 852 | Socket 940 |
| 2800 MHz | N/A | 254 | 854 | Socket 940 |
| 2600 MHz | 152 | N/A | N/A | Socket 939 |
| 2800 MHz | 154 | N/A | N/A | Socket 939 |
The affected processors may produce inconsistent results in the presence of three specific conditions occurring simultaneously:
- The execution of floating point-intensive code sequences
- Elevated processor temperatures
- Elevated ambient temperatures
A software verification tool for identifying the AMD Opteron processors listed in the above table that may be affected under these specific conditions is available only to AMD OEM partners.[citation needed] AMD will replace those processors at no charge.[citation needed]
Future
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This article contains information about a scheduled or expected future
product. It may contain preliminary information that does not reflect the final version of the product. |
Future Opteron processors, will see an implementation of the Montreal core based on a 45 nm fabrication node, manufactured using the MCM technique. Further, the server line of processors will incorporate the newly announced Bulldozer core with native 4 cores or more configurations, each supporting SSE5 aimed at better HPC and cryptographic computations.
See also
References
- ^ AMD Details Native Quad-core Design Features for Breakthrough Performance and Advanced Power Efficiencies. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
- ^ http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~118193,00.html AMD to Ship Industry’s First Native x86 Quad-Core Processors In August, AMD
- ^ Quad-Core Upgradeability. Retrieved on 2007-03-06.
- ^ Merritt, Rick. "AMD tips quad-core performance", EETimes.com. Retrieved on 2007-03-16.
- ^ AnandTech report, retrieved September 10, 2007
- ^ DailyTech report, retrieved September 10, 2007
- ^ DailyTech image detailing ACP, retrieved September 10, 2007
- ^ AMD Opteron™ Processor FAQs. AMD. Retrieved on 16 March 2007.
- ^ Compiled roadmap of Server processors
- ^ Advanced Micro Devices (2006-04). AMD Opteron Processor Models x52 and x54 Production Notice. Press release. Retrieved on 2006-11-30.
External links
- Official Opteron homepage
- AMD Technical Docs
- AMD K8 Opteron technical specifications
- AMD K8 Dual Core Opteron technical specifications
- Interactive AMD Opteron rating and product ID guide
- Understanding the Detailed Architecture of AMD's 64 bit Core
- 28th Top 500 List (Nov 2006)
- Sun Microsystems Opteron Page (Dec 2006)
- AMD: dual-core Opteron to 3GHz
| AMD processors | |
|---|---|
| Discontinued | Am2900 · Am29000 · Am9080 · Am286 · Am386 · Am486 · Am5x86 · K5 · K6 · K6-2 · K6-III · Duron · Athlon · Mobile Athlon 64 · Alchemy |
| Current | Geode · Sempron · Mobile Sempron · Athlon 64 · Athlon 64 X2 (Athlon X2, AMD K9) · Athlon 64 FX · Turion 64 · Turion 64 X2 · Opteron · Stream |
| Upcoming | Griffin (Mobile) · K10 (Phenom) · Bobcat, Bulldozer · Fusion |
| AMD CPU slots and sockets · AMD Chipsets | |
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