News - AMD's unannounced dodeca-core Opteron processor goes up for sale

[HEXUS]

Ebay seller makes AMD's upcoming Magny-Cours platform available to buyers.

Read more.

[shaithis]

Wowzors! Didn't realise they were working on 12 core CPUs....let alone was this close to releasing them!

My ESX box just screamed out for 4 of these on a suitable motherboard.....

[Terbinator]

Is it just me or are they more rectangle than your average processor ?

[Jay]

what kind of cooler would fit that?

[badass]

My ESX box just screamed out for 4 of these on a suitable motherboard.....

It'll be screaming out more for the Nehalem-EX CPU's

Even with 8 cores per CPU they'll run rings around the 12 core Opterons in virtualisation.

[shaithis]

what kind of cooler would fit that?

An LGA1944 cooler

[Jay]

and to keep it cool you need a new type of case

[kingpotnoodle]

Is it just me or are they more rectangle than your average processor ?

It's a different socket to your average desktop CPU, even inside a 1U server there is more board space to accomodate them...

IIRC AMD have done what Intel like to do and stick 2 dies on 1 package, these 12 core CPUs are just 2x 6 Core dies and some glue.

[Steve]

I wonder how the hypertransport links and the memory will hold up with 12 cores sat in a socket? The caches better be good...

[Biscuit]

I wonder how the hypertransport links and the memory will hold up with 12 cores sat in a socket? The caches better be good...

I thought that... single memory controller with 12cores?

[badass]

I thought that... single memory controller with 12cores?

2 Memory controllers - 4 channels per 12 cores. It's an MCM like the old core2 quads except the dice are linked with an internal hypertransport link.

[Lenny_Nero]

I thought that... single memory controller with 12cores?

From the second line below the picture...

Each processor will feature four HyperTransport links and support for registered DDR3 memory.

[JF-AMD]

It'll be screaming out more for the Nehalem-EX CPU's

Even with 8 cores per CPU they'll run rings around the 12 core Opterons in virtualisation.

Not necessarily. And the "cost per VM" will be a lot higher for Nehalem EX.

[badass]

Not necessarily. And the "cost per VM" will be a lot higher for Nehalem EX.

Got any benchmarks to back that up? Didn't think so because it's not true. Current Dual Processor Xeon 5500's are doing more than 50% better for virtualisation than the current Quad core dual processor opterons. Check the Anandtech review of the Xeon 5500's and you'll see.

[JF-AMD]

Got any benchmarks to back that up? Didn't think so because it's not true. Current Dual Processor Xeon 5500's are doing more than 50% better for virtualisation than the current Quad core dual processor opterons. Check the Anandtech review of the Xeon 5500's and you'll see.

No, the Nehalem EX products have not been announced yet, so there are no benchmarks there.

We'll launch before the end of the month. We'll be able to compare benchmarks at that point and I think you'll find that when you compare price, performance and power consumption (the 3 things that matter the most for customers), you'll see AMD clearly in the lead.

But I wouldn't put too much faith in VMmark benchmarks. Even VMware has said they are outdated. I have never met a customer who has 100 VMs configured with ~500-700MB of memory on a single platform.

Most 2P customers have 5-10 VM's with ~4-8GB of memory configured; 4P customers tend to have 10-20VMs.

What will make Magny Cours shine for virtualization is the large number of real cores. 10 VMs with 2 vCPUs per VM means that on a 6-core 2P you have 20 vCPUs fighting for 12 total cores, so you are emptying cache more often. For AMD, you'll have 20 vCPUs with 24 total cores, so cache data gets to stay in place an a lot of the latency in virtualization is reduced.

[Hicks12]

Holy crap an AMD representative .

@ badass, maybe the reason current 5500's do better than AMD's offering is because of the price? Just like in the desktop space, Intel provide a performance increase but at a higher premium same as what Nvidia used to do until AMD kicked them off the spotlight again .

Would be nice to see these out soon then .