AMD launches Opteron X-Series to take on Intel’s Atom

• Claims new chips have 2x performance and more power-efficient than top performing Intel Atoms
• Opteron X2150 for multimedia-oriented server workloads and X1150 for general scale-out workloads

AMD has unveiled a new family of low power server processors: The AMD Opteron X-Series, which it claims is optimised for scale-out server architectures.
 
The first AMD Opteron X-Series processors, formerly known as ‘Kyoto,’ are the highest density, most power-efficient small core x86 processors ever built, the company said in a statement.
 
The new X1150 and X2150 processors beat the top performing Intel Atom processor on key performance benchmarks, including single thread and throughput performance with superior power-efficiency, twice the cores and L2 cache with a more advanced pipeline architecture, higher integration and support for up to 32 gigabytes of DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) – four times more than the Intel Atom processor.

The AMD Opteron X-Series processors come in two variants.  The AMD Opteron X2150, which consumes as little as 11 watts, is the first server APU (accelerated processing unit) system-on-a-chip integrating CPU and GPU (central and graphic processing units) engines with a high-speed bus on a single die.
 
This enables customers to take advantage of leading-edge AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics technology for multimedia-oriented server workloads, the company said.
 
The AMD Opteron X1150, which consumes as little as nine watts, is a CPU-only version optimised for general scale-out workloads.
 
“The data centre is at an inflection point and requires a high number of cores in a dense form factor with integrated graphics, massive amounts of DRAM and unprecedented power efficiency to keep up with the pace of innovation of Internet services,” said Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit at AMD.
 
“AMD has a proud history of server innovation, and the AMD Opteron X-Series processors challenge the status quo by providing unmatched capabilities to drive the most energy-efficient servers in the industry.”
       
AMD claimed its Opteron X-Series processors are now the world’s premier small-core x86 APUs and CPUs, ideal for next-generation scale-out web and cloud applications ranging from big data analytics to image processing, multimedia content delivery, and hosting.
 
“Fundamental changes in computing architectures are required to support space, power and cost demands organisations need to deliver compelling, new infrastructure economics,” said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, Hyperscale Server business segment, HP.
 
“The new x86 AMD Opteron X-Series processors integrated into future HP Moonshot servers will continue to push the boundaries of power efficiency for social, mobile, cloud and big data workloads,” he added.
 
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