Server processor battles heat up

Intel continues to dominate the x86 processor market, but rival Advanced Micro Devices is making inroads as users turn to its Opteron processor for souped-up performance on low-end servers.

A key reason for the move is Opteron's Direct Connect Architecture, which links the CPU directly with memory, I/O and other CPUs, eliminating traffic bottlenecks that occur when data moving on and off the processor must share a front-side bus, as is the case with Intel's Xeon chip. In addition, Opteron uses an on-chip memory controller, which analysts say gives the CPU a boost when transferring data between the processor and the rest of the system.

This is increasingly important as systems move to multicore architecture. With AMD's approach, processing happens faster and as more CPUs are added to a system, they get the memory bandwidth they need and do not have to compete for bandwidth over a shared connection, analysts say.

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Intel continues to dominate the x86 processor market, but rival Advanced Micro Devices is making inroads as users turn to its Opteron processor for souped-up performance on low-end servers.

A key reason for the move is Opteron's Direct Connect Architecture, which links the CPU directly with memory, I/O and other CPUs, eliminating traffic bottlenecks that occur when data moving on and off the processor must share a front-side bus, as is the case with Intel's Xeon chip. In addition, Opteron uses an on-chip memory controller, which analysts say gives the CPU a boost when transferring data between the processor and the rest of the system.

This is increasingly important as systems move to multicore architecture. With AMD's approach, processing happens faster and as more CPUs are added to a system, they get the memory bandwidth they need and do not have to compete for bandwidth over a shared connection, analysts say.

Intel plans to add a high-speed interconnect technology to Xeon, but the chip maker altered its road map last month, saying that Tigerton, its first chip to have this feature, wouldn't ship until 2007. As for an on-board memory controller, Intel scrapped Whitefield, which was to have been the first Xeon with this type of architecture, in favor of Tigerton.

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64, says he doesn't expect to see a Xeon with an on-board memory controller until 2009 at the earliest, and without that feature "we see little likelihood that Intel will be able to claim performance leadership."

Moving to Operton

Meanwhile, start-ups and corporate buyers in growing numbers are turning to Opteron as a more powerful alternative to Xeon.

Media software company MESoft, for example, recently ditched its Xeon-based systems in favor of Opteron to boost the performance of its processor-intensive video-encoding software.

"Our bar is measuring how close to real time we can do encoding," says Freddy Goeske, co-founder and vice president of technology at the Burbank, Calif., software firm. "On our Intel systems it was taking six hours to encode one hour [of video]. With AMD, it takes about an hour and a half . . . we're confident that we'll have real-time encoding in a short while."

In addition, Goeske says he is more comfortable with AMD, given Intel's road-map shift.

"It seems like Intel is scrambling, to be honest. I'm really glad we're not in that mess right now," he says. "It's pretty clear where we're going for the next couple of years with AMD. For us to plan high-bandwidth encoders around what Intel has going on right now, well, I wouldn't know where to begin."

According to Mercury Research numbers released by AMD, in the second quarter the chip maker's server market share surpassed 10% for the first time and grew to nearly 13% in the third quarter.

"They are eating into Intel's market share, and that will continue," Brookwood says. "Right now AMD has performance advantages, they have power advantages, they have performance-per-watt advantages."