AMD doubles up processors

AMD last week showed off its dual-core chip technology, which the company expects to ship next year. Dual-core technology enables the doubling of processors in a server.

The company demonstrated dual-core technology on a four-processor HP DL385 server running Microsoft Server 2003.

“We are demonstrating the world’s first dual-core processor,” says Ben Williams, vice president of AMD’s Enterprise and Server/Workstation Business. Dual-core technology “is AMD’s way to provide more efficient processing power while limiting the penalties… of power consumption and heat dissipation.”

AMD completed dual-core chipset development in June. It will provide the technology in one-, two-, four- and eight-processor servers. The processors will be interconnected with Direct Connect technology, also called HyperTransport.

“We hear from our customers that it is getting difficult for them to make big hardware changes, get enough power into their data centers and cool the data center,” says Steve Cummings, group manager of industry-standard servers platform systems marketing at HP. “Dual-core technology is a very efficient way to increase performance without increasing the power and cooling infrastructure.”

Dual-core technology can be enabled in today’s servers by simply swapping out processors and applying a BIOS update. When the dual-core technology ships, users will either be able to upgrade servers themselves or have the vendors do it for them.

Prices for the dual-core processor have not been determined.

Intel is expected to demonstrate dual-core technology at the Intel Developer Forum this week. Intel has also claimed it will have a dual-core Itanium in the middle of next year.

IBM already manufactures dual-core Power processors.