Tuesday, July 26, 2011

AMD 16-Core Interlagos Server CPUs to Begin Shipping in August

In the company's latest conference call with financial analysts, AMD has confirmed that its high-performance Interlagos server processors, which can sport up to 16-core and are based on the Bulldozer architecture, will start shipping next month with availability expected by the end of the year.

"Interlagos, which is our server-based product, will begin shipping initial production next month," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of products group at AMD, during a conference call with financial analysts, reports Xbit Labs.

AMD's Interlagos processors are based on the company's high-performance Bulldozer architecture and will have either 12 or 16 processing cores, while also featuring a series of improvements that should increase their performance when compared with the current Opteron 6100-series CPUs.

The chips will also feature support for AMD's Turbo Core dynamic overclocking technology, a configurable TDP, and come with advanced power saving technologies.

Interlagos CPUs features a multi-chip design (the processor is built by joining together two six or eight core Valencia dies) and are compatible with the existing G34 socket.

"We expect to begin shipping our first server platform featuring the Bulldozer this quarter. The Interlagos platform is our first server offering optimized for today's cloud datacenters,” said Thomas Seifert, AMD's interim CEO.

“The [Bulldozer] architecture excels at compute-intensive and HPC workloads, where it will deliver up to 35% performance improvements compared to our current offerings.

“Customer excitement for Interlagos is high: all of our major customers are expected to introduce servers based on the new platform this year. We are committed to the server market and are focused on returning the business to a growth trajectory,” he added.

One of the first machines to include the new server CPUs will be built by Cray and is expected to arrive in the second half of this year. The XK6 pairs AMD's multi-core processors with Nvidia's Tesla 2000-series compute boards.

The AMD representatives haven't disclosed any information regarding the release date of the Valencia server processors, or about the desktop version of these Bulldozer CPUs. However, a recent FX-Series advertising movie seems to suggest the latter will arrive on September 19.