Advanced Micro Devices added five more chips to its line of Six-Core Opteron processors on Monday, offering a boost in performance with lower power consumption that current models.
The new additions include three Six-Core Opteron HE processor models are manufactured using a 45-nanometer process and can be used in serves with four, six or eight processors. The six-core chips consume 55 watts of power, on average, compared to 75 watts and 105 watts, for other models, according to AMD.
The new low-power chips — the 2GHz Six-Core Opteron 2423 HE, 2.1GHz Six-Core Opteron 2425 HE, and 2.1GHz Six-Core Opteron 8425 HE — are priced from US$455 to $1,514 each, in 1,000-unit quantities, according to AMD’s most recent price list.
Lowering power consumption with the HE variants of the Six-Core Opteron allows servers based on chips to be packed more closely together inside a server, reducing the space it takes up. It also helps contain rising power costs as companies pack more servers into data centers.
The new Six-Core Opteron chips are already available in ProLiant G6 systems from Hewlett-Packard. Other vendors, including IBM and Dell, are readying servers to be released over the next month or so.
In addition to the introduction of the three Six-Core Opteron HE chips, AMD added two more chips to the lineup: the 2.8GHz Six-Core Opteron SE 8439 and 2.8GHz Six-Core Opteron SE 2439. Both chips consume 105 watts of power, according to AMD.
They are priced at $2,649 and $1,019, respectively.
