News AMD announces 40W six-core Opteron

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/09/01/amd-announces-40w-six-core-opteron/1

AMD has announced some new members to its Opteron range of server chips - six-core processors drawing a minuscule 40W of power without sacrificing performance.

 

Details before I pass judgement. But low power, hexacore chips might be excellent overclockers when the mainstream versions hit.

 

No mention of clock speed then. I wonder how low the CPU's are to hit that 40w target.

 

256 MHz sixcore CPU! providing 1.5ghz intotal. Overclocking to 512 providing a 3ghz in total sixcore!

lol, but a more serious note: this could be quite promising if they begin developing CPU's with low power requirements for high overclocking etc. Even if they jump back to 2ghz (per core) overclocking to like 3ghz + for a short while till the chips can be developed into better frequences. So probably nothing fantastic compared to the i5/i7s for a short while but in a few years reckon this could be a good direction of CPU's. But as said above.. details required to see if really successful this time round

 

Are these the 32nm that AMD was said to be producing or am I thinking of intel?

 

Bit sad technology wise that AMD needs 6 cores to keep up with the server beast that is Nehalem. On the other hand if it provides comparable performance the consumer won't really care.

 

You do realize that Nehalem munches on power like a gremlin on pot?

 

I would just like to be able to use 4 cores for everyday computing let alone 6

 

I just hope this Opteron runs better than the one I have because I can see a big different to the previous Xeon based server I had stolen a few months back.

The problem with AMD is they have been shouting about various products for over a year now but when they finally get independently reviewed their products haven't really been up to much.

This is bad marketing and by the sound of it just sound bites for the share holders still crying about the price they paid 2 years ago for AMD shares.

 

Nehalem is pretty power efficient considering it does more work per clock so finishes the task quicker and has pretty good idle power characteristics. Also from this tech report posting http://techreport.com/discussions.x/17502 it seems that this hex core runs at 1.8 Ghz. Might be a good upgrade for existing opteron servers.

 

Six 1.8 ghz cores. Surely four 2.7 GHZ would be more suitable, especially in single threaded apps.
(6x1.8=10.8, 4x2.7=10.8)

 

I want to see this done for consumer based cpus.

 

I still want my hybrid CPU.

An Atom core or simular for tasks of under 50% load, and a 4/5 cores of current gen CPU's which deal with high load tasks. But those 4/5 cores dont idle they would actually turn off completely if possible.

It might be a difficult idea to develope, might even be silly but it would save a bucket load of energy!