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Hardware AMD 2007 Server Roadmap
Kristopher Kubicki (Blog) - December 14, 2006 9:47 AM
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AMD executives reveal more cache, more quad-core en route for AMD

Over the last few months much as been revealed about AMD's next-generation quad-core architecture.  This architecture, previously dubbed K8L by Henri Richard, now publically dubbed K10, is scheduled to be the first monolithic quad-core design. AMD engineers still internally refer to this architecture as Greyhound.

Since unveiling the details of the chip, AMD has started to use the codename Barcelona to describe the server variant. The Barcelona chipset is a member of the Cities family -- all server-based AMD codenames for 2007 and 2008 are named after Cities. Desktop codenames are all named after Stars even though architecturally, many Stars and Cities CPUs are identical.

AMD has revealed to DailyTech that Barcelona, which AMD just recently demonstrated, will be "enhanced" with the Shanghai core in early 2008.  AMD's Senior Vice President, Marty Seyer, would not elaborate on what the enhancements are, claiming that the new core would simply "bring further performance enhancements, as well as cache efficiency." 

When the Greyhound architecture was publically unveiled this past June, AMD's Corporate Vice President and CTO Phil Hester claimed that the initial Barcelona processor would utilize 2MB of L3 shared cache -- hinting that additional versions of K10 with larger caches are roadmap possibilities. Although we cannot speak for the other enhancements, the additional cache Hester described in June 2006 is almost certainly present in Shanghai.

As with previous generations of Opteron processors, Barcelona will only encompass the multi-socket codename. For single-socket servers, Budapest will act as AMD's city codename for the 1xxx Opteron processor.  There is no "cache-upgrade" version of Budapest in the way that Shanghai is an upgrade for Barcelona.  This is likely due to the fact that whatever enhancements are on Shanghai do not necessarily show performance gains on single-socket systems.

According to AMD's roadmaps, Shanghai will still utilize DDR2 memory, though DDR3 processors are also slated for production around that time as well.  "DDR2 is going to serve us quite nicely for several years," added Seyer.

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This is for AMD
By crystal clear on 12/16/2006 2:10:56 AM , Rating: 2
Quote-

'You'd have to be nuts' to think AMD can match our tick – Intel


Intel has confirmed plans to "tick" and "tock" AMD into submission.

Beer in hand and in belly, we listened to Intel's latest AMD-hammering pitch during a session Wednesday with company executives in San Francisco.

Rather than going biblical, Intel has gone metronomical, vowing to overwhelm AMD with a regular "cadence" of product releases that run on a "tick tock" fashion. The tick tock relationship centers on Intel thumping the market with a new chip architecture – the tock - and then following that with less dramatic, more pragmatic manufacturing process, core, voltage and cache shifts – the tick.

Intel has been banging on about this strategy – that's really more of a tock tick than a tick tock – for quite awhile, and we've obliged the chip maker by publicizing its talking points. Consider it a holiday gift.

With its new, tocked "Core" designs crammed into the market, Intel now plans to focus on the pragmatic part of its equation, moving quickly from 65nm manufacturing to 45nm.

"From our perspective, 65nm is kind of old news," said Intel manufacturing chief Tom Franz

AMD, well behind on the 65nm front, looks to shrink the usual two-year lag between process generations by moving to 45nm within 18 months. Intel executives, however, characterized the 18-month plan as a figment of AMD's imagination until the rival chip maker can prove otherwise.

"They are so dreadfully behind," said Intel SVP Pat Gelsinger, adding that "you'd have to be nuts" to think AMD will come close to beating Intel to any manufacturing milestones.

To Gelsinger's point, Intel has been relentless on the fabrication front. It has more manufacturing muscle than any other chipmaker on the planet and does not seem to slip with its chip production, as it has done with design. Such manufacturing strength translates into better, cheaper product....................................

Source-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/14/intel_tick...





RE: This is for AMD
By Targon on 12/16/2006 7:30:45 AM , Rating: 1
While Intel may be ahead when it comes to process technology, we still see Intel using their old system design, which has been a huge bottleneck for them. They NEED to put crazy amounts of cache on their processors in order to compete(P4 generation) and stay ahead(Core generation).

AMD may be behind in terms of manufacturing process technology, but are pulling ahead in terms of system architecture improvements.

Historically, Intel is able to use their resources to push the current designs further. In the MHz race, Intel pushed and pushed and pushed. Now they are pushing on process technology. Notice that since the release of the original Athlon, AMD has managed to compete, and for a long time were able to beat the best that Intel had to show. There WILL be a limit to how far process technology can shrink, and that may be what eventually kills Intel.



RE: This is for AMD
By coldpower27 on 12/16/2006 8:53:40 AM , Rating: 2
They can't address everything at once, system interconnect improvements are slated for the Nehalem.

They are putting crazy amounts of cache (in comparison to AMD) because their cache expertise is great, they can fit dramatically more cache on a given area then AMD can, not to mention it's faster. They also have the manufacturing muscle to afford larger amounts of cache then AMD as they are production limited. One of the reason AMD's decided to go IMC, was that they knew they weren't quite as good on cache technology, and wanted it's effects minimized. Hence adding more cache to K8 derivatives produces limited gains.

The only reason that AMD Athlon was able to pull ahead, was that Intel let their marketeers take control of design instead of build a proper performance oriented design. Once Intel is taking the architecture race seriously, it is likely this tick tock mechanism, will keep them inline and competitive, short of a major mistake. It's unlikely you will see something like the Athlon 64x2 vs the Pentium D situation again.


RE: This is for AMD
By Justin Case on 12/16/2006 12:12:38 PM , Rating: 2
Of course they could address everything at once. The people working on architecture design aren't the same people who are working on manufacturing process technology.

And no one puts tons of cache on chips "because they can". The do it because they HAVE to. Cache takes up die space, and space eats into margins. If they didn't need the cache, they'd use that extra space to make more CPUs from each wafer, meaning they could sell each one cheaper, and regain market share faster.

The problem with Intel is that it suffers from a very nasty "not invented here" syndrome. The whole P4 fiasco was caused by the fact that a) Intel refused to adopt innovations created by AMD and b) Intel USA refused to let an Israeli-developed architecture (the Pentium-M / Core Duo) be their flagship product. Anyone with a clue could see the Pentium-M was a much better design than the P4; add AMD64 instructions and multi-core and you'd have a winner (aka Core 2 Duo).

Eventually Intel's profits and their market share dropped so much that they were forced to come to their senses. And, from a consumer's point of view, I only wish that had happened sooner (not only because the new Intel chips are faster, but also because it forces AMD to drop their prices).

Now, Intel is still far behind AMD in terms of interconnects. AMD has hired a lot of key people (some from Intel, no less) in areas related to memory bandwidth and co-processor architectures, and the AMD-led HyperTransport consortium unites nearly every major IC manufacturer except Intel.

Will Intel bite yet another bullet and license HT, or will they stick to their bus-based design until they have CSI ready? Waiting could cost them a lot on the server front (where AMD still has the advantage, despite being one CPU generation and one manufacturing process generation behind - all thanks to their superior interconnect technology).



RE: This is for AMD
By coldpower27 on 12/16/2006 9:55:56 PM , Rating: 2
No they can't as that is too risky a change, they made some changes to architecture with the Core to Core 2 leap. They will address the interconnects with Nehalem, they are doing things one step at a time. Prescott did too many changes at once and turned out poorly, though still an adequate product. They learned their lesson and will just take things in a proper step by step manner.

Yes, Intel does because they can afford it, they are not strapped for production capacity like AMD, cache does take up some die space, but not enough to be seriously detrimental to someone with Intel's resource levels as well as expertise on cache technology. There is also the issue of selling their chips for higher margins, they can charge more for the higher cache versions. They have always been able to afford to put larger amounts of cache of their processors, hell they disable the full cache size versions to create lower SKU without the need to make another processor with a native reduced cache size to address each market. Intel produces cache amounts it can easily afford to produce in quantity for each market segment.

The IMC itself on AMD's architecture takes up quite a bit of real estate on AMD's processor, they do it because it provides significant performance enhancements. They also don't like to rely on cache as like I said for AMD it takes up a significant real estate on the die, probably as much or more then the IMC and provides less of a gain.

AMD's architecture only has an advantage on the server front, when competing with NetBurst derivatives, The only remaining bastion right now for AMD is the Opteron 8xxx, line the Woodcrest is more then enough to compete against the Opteron 2xxx even using legacy FSB technology.


RE: This is for AMD
By sbandyk on 12/16/2006 10:20:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
And no one puts tons of cache on chips "because they can". The[y] do it because they HAVE to. Cache takes up die space, and space eats into margins. If they didn't need the cache, they'd use that extra space to make more CPUs from each wafer, meaning they could sell each one cheaper, and regain market share faster.


Who says? You put exactly what you need to on a chip to hit your performance target. If it's not cache, it's a memory controller or more registers or another core.
You also put in the ammount of cache that maximizes returns. If 4 MB of CACHE gets you 5% better performance than 1MB of CACHE Intel would never run 4MB of CACHE.

I see what you're trying to say.. Intel is cheating because they HAVE TO put more cache on. That smacks as a pretty bold assertion without support. They put more cache on because it pays dividends in performanace. They also put more cache in because they make their performace targets (that is.. currently faster than AMD).
By your reasoning.. no one puts an Integrated Memory controller on because they want to.. they do it because they HAVE to. How about this.. No one adds more SSE instructions or 64bit instruction extensions because they want to, they do it because they HAVE to.

BTW.. as for price being the way to market share.. It was Intel that forced the latest price war. The price/performance on the Core2 chips is fantastic IMHO. The last time I saw a Fry's budget combo it was a P4 Dual-Core and MB for $120. I wouldn't buy one for games (or Fluid Dynamics) but it's a hell of a lot of computer for that cheap. I walked in expecting a Semperon bundle for just a bit less.

One other thing I need to comment on, IMCs are great when you've got A processor. Personally, I dislike the IMCs because I work in the IT industry and I deal with more than one personal computer a year (like an enthusiast). I'm currently shopping for, preferably, 8 cores in some new computational nodes. I can go 4CPU Dual-Core Opteron and pay an arm and a leg and I've got to purchase my memory 8 DIMMs at a time. At the very least, It's much more difficult to buy now, upgrade later.
With Intel, I can get my 2-cpu quad-core nodes and save money on memory now [just enough] until I line up more funding. I'm also get to upgrade the system pool of memory and not per physical CPU.
AMD's reliance on IMC has also held AMD back. They've been slow to adapt to architctual changes in memory because moving to a new memory standard will always require a redesign of the CPU and possibly the socket. AMD will have to deal with this all over again for DDR-3. In the move to DDR-2 this wasn't initially a big deal since DDR2 latency was higher and Athlon64's low latency IMC is really THE performance feature (topping off an all around strong processor). AMD's delay in moving to AM2 and DDR2 is a liability now however. DDR prices are up, DDR2 prices are down and the speed and real and functional latency is down on the DDR2 chips (faster clocked DDR2 has lower effective latency in real time and lower latence chips at any given speed are now available).
Unfortunately, what we have now are more AMD DDR systems that aren't that old but they require increasingly expensive, increasingly obsolete memory. DDR and DDR2 prices are nearly the same if you look at memory that is common now (ddr400 v. ddr2-667)

Overall, I'm very happy with Intel's current products and their roadmap. I'd like to see a higher performance interconnect, especially on the high end smp boxes but I can't argue with the performance or the price. I'm looking at ready to deploy, warrantied single vendor 8-core computational nodes in the $7K USD range and that's not with the low end cpus. I'll likely go 2.33GHz because our chiller is a problem but I could go top of the line and still keep it under 8K with a real server warranty.. or I could go 4xdual Opteron for about $10K with a similar config...

What was that about cutting a little cache to win on price?

P.S. Would Intel actually have to license HT? HyperTransport is the product of an industry consortium, hell even Apple is a member of the HT design committee. Intel has co-opted AMD's 64bit extensions, I'd assume they have other reasons for not using a per-cpu serial link by now.


RE: This is for AMD
By crystal clear on 12/17/2006 12:21:47 AM , Rating: 2
QUOTE-
"P.S. Would Intel actually have to license HT? HyperTransport is the product of an industry consortium, hell even Apple is a member of the HT design committee. Intel has co-opted AMD's 64bit extensions, I'd assume they have other reasons for not using a per-cpu serial link by now."

UNQUOTE-If INTEL GAVE THE TICK-TOCK YOU GAVE THE " GONG "


RE: This is for AMD
By Justin Case on 12/17/2006 5:52:52 PM , Rating: 2
Was that a rethorical question or something? Of course Intel would have to license HT. They're not members of the HT consortium. Just as AMD had to license some DDR3 / PCIe patents (from RAMBUS) for their next-generation chips.

HT has nothing to do with x86 and is not covered by the AMD-Intel instruction set agreement.

And trust me, if the chips performed well enough with lower cache (say, only 5% slower with half the cache), they wouldn't even think twice about reducing it and using the extra space to get more dies out of each wafer. It's simple economics. They need the extra cache because their interconnects are too slow to keep the cores fed, and there is no other short-term solution (other than selling much slower chips, and that wouldn't look good).

No one adds stuff to a chip (especially something like cache, that takes up a lot of space) unless it's _necessary_. Die area and profit margins go hand in hand (for more than one reason). If you don't realise that, you clearly don't work in this industry.




RE: This is for AMD
By crystal clear on 12/17/2006 12:45:22 AM , Rating: 2
Quote-

"Intel USA refused to let an Israeli-developed architecture (the Pentium-M / Core Duo) be their flagship product."

Unquote-

There are some more CORE surprises on the way in a Tick Tock
fashion from Intel(Israel).


RE: This is for AMD
By Justin Case on 12/17/2006 5:54:42 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly. Can you imagine how much better things would be (for Intel and for consumers) if Intel hadn't spent three years whacking the P-M on the head while it tried to flog the dead horse (P4)?


RE: This is for AMD
By carl0ski on 12/20/2006 9:13:13 PM , Rating: 2
i always felt the IMC by AMD was largely due to the fact

AMD no longer maae a northbridge Chipset and the memory performance was at the mercy of
VIA & SIS development

between mainboards and chipsets
AMD K7 memory performance and stability varied radically causing poor performance tag and public confusion especially in the low-mid range.



45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By Xajel on 12/15/2006 12:11:07 AM , Rating: 2
will the Shaghi be the 45nm part ??

I think - as AMD stated about going for more cache - they will trasit to 45nm part earlier than mid08 ( in 1H ), and after that, they will bring DDR3 with AM3 in mid08..

what this cache is it that Z-RAM thing ??
so the 2MB L3 cache may be magicly increased to 10MB !! naaaa I don't think that much but it's logical you know, same silicon cost as 2MB of non_Z-RAM + the lesser cost when going to 45nm !!

or may AMD postponed the 45nm parts to go with AM3 ??




RE: 45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By JackPack on 12/15/2006 4:10:40 AM , Rating: 2
Shanghai will be 65nm. AMD hasn't even been able to hit process nodes on time, so the chance of them pulling in their already aggressive 45nm schedule is remote.


RE: 45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By jonnybradley on 12/15/2006 6:28:32 AM , Rating: 2
I thought I read (on DT I think) that K8L would support DDR2 and DDR3, as in the same chip will take either, or am I just being mad?


RE: 45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By aka1nas on 12/15/2006 1:18:53 PM , Rating: 3
My understanding was that K8L will have a DDR2/DDR3 mem controller and will technically be a socket AM3 chip. However, it will be keyed in such a way that you can fit it into an AM2 motherboard still and use it with DDR2.


RE: 45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By Xajel on 12/15/2006 11:29:23 PM , Rating: 2
even if K8L will support both DDR2/3, there will be no support in the real word, the current roadmap stated that DDR3 support is being slated to mid 08, and for this mean, the AM3 Socket will delaid for that time too ( as AM3 = DDR3 ), K8L still on it's time in 3Q07 and some source says it may be late Q2 for some chips ( mostly Opterons )

So I guess the first K8L will be in AM2+ mobos, ( and will work on AM2 mobos with some features disabled, HT3 + split power lanes are my main guess ) after that in 9 months ( to mid 08 ) we will have DDR3 with AM3...

the problem is to said that Shanghai are dated for earlier than mid 2008, so what Shanghai will have ??

if DDR3 & 45nm are scheduled for mid08 and K8L for Q3-07 so what we are guessing for Shanghai ??

is Z-RAM ?? 2MB of L3 will go for 10MB if Z-RAM is used, this assueming AMD will use the same silicon area.


RE: 45nm, DDR3 or Z-RAM ??
By Xajel on 12/15/2006 11:10:37 PM , Rating: 2
AMD-IBM stated they will go for 45nm in 18 months started from the first 65nm round up, counting from this month, this will end at late 1H08...


Cache
By JackPack on 12/14/2006 6:58:02 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Barcelona processor would utilize 2MB of L3 shared cache -- hinting that additional versions of K8L with larger caches are roadmap possibilities


Given that Barcelona only has 512 KB of L2 per core, I sure as heck hope a larger L3 is on the horizon.




RE: Cache
By ADDAvenger on 12/14/2006 7:10:02 PM , Rating: 3
AMD doesn't need nearly as much L2 because of their IMC. I do realize that in some cases there's simply no substitute for cache, but that doesn't seem to be so in most cases.


RE: Cache
By nerdye on 12/14/2006 9:38:24 PM , Rating: 2
That is true that the IMC makes extra cache almost trivial on the current 939 and am2 amd processors, yet some tasks are simply very cache sensitive and amd suffers in those small cases. We are assuming that amd's archtecture will be similar enough that the less cache on an amd processor arguement will still be valid, which I also support. I honestly don't think that amd running ddr3 will help them that much right away, yet will allow their chipsets to mature during the transition period in the market (which will be very slow) from ddr2 to ddr3, just as intel matured their ddr2 chipsets all while there was still a huge market for ddr1 which amd was still using primarliy at the time. We all know that amd is gaining ground in the server market due to multi socket systems ala hypertransport, I and all of us nerds for that matter should hope amds stars/desktop processors carry on that trend, in the light of good competition to core 2 duo, which I just bought last week by the way.


RE: Cache
By ChipDude on 12/17/2006 1:21:04 AM , Rating: 2
AMD can talk all the want about cache, LOL. Their problem is they don't have 4 fabs running tens of thousands of wafers a week. So, in the end they'd like cache, but they don't got capacity... Poor AMD.

If INTEL didn't put 4 Meg of cache and instead increased the CPU count by 30% we'd be seeing 50 dollar Core2s or INTEL would be laying off more people. In the end this cache argument is very academic. Both companies lock and load their architectures years ahead, cacluate total CPU market, aim for a market share and put factories in place. Nobody just says lets expand from 2-4Meg or vice versa.

If AMD puts a lot of cache on Barcelona it will cost them valuable silicon. Either they concede market share or give something else up.


"Sever"
By ahkey on 12/14/2006 4:32:35 PM , Rating: 2
So what was wrong with it?

I know, you just missed the 'r' ;)




RE: "Sever"
By TrogdorJW on 12/19/2006 5:30:36 PM , Rating: 2
Or maybe they missed the "e" and AMD is making a new severe product? Extreme has been overused after all.... :)


In other news......
By crystal clear on 12/17/2006 1:44:51 AM , Rating: 2
IBM is deploying its CELL PROCESSORS in its SERVERS(Blades)-

Result huge demand for these servers,resulting in shortages in supply of CELL CHIPS.

The supply demand forces at play are showing its effect




Shanghai has HT3, Barcelona doesnt
By zedrik00 on 12/29/2006 12:48:38 PM , Rating: 2
I'm a little confused about the difference between Barcelona and Shanghai cores. The article says its probably a cache difference but this site http://trackingamd.blogspot.com/2006/12/amd-proces... says that Shanghai will be an update because it has HT3.0, while Barcelona will launch only with HT2.0




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