AMD, the world’s second-largest chip company, has promised to come out all guns blazing to grab a larger share of the market from Intel Corp.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the world’s second-largest chip company, has promised to come out all guns blazing to grab a larger share of the market from Intel Corp, the world’s largest chip-maker.
The Austin, Texas-based company on Tuesday announced the availability of its six-core AMD Opteron processors, codenamed Istanbul, for the high-end server market, taking the battle to the next level.
Istanbul is the world’s first six-core server processor with direct connect architecture for two, four and eight socket servers, AMD officials said in Bangalore. The company also claimed the chip wrings out 34% more performance-per-watt over the previous generation quad-core processors in the exact same platform.
Original equipment makers like Cray, Dell, HP, IBM, and Sun Microsystems will sport the AMD six-core Opteron or Istanbul. Three more versions of the six-core chip are planned for the second half of 2009.
But AMD’s joy could be short-lived, with Intel announcing, just ahead of AMD’s Istanbul launch, its own plans to launch an eight-core Nehalem EX early 2010 aimed at servers with four or more sockets.
“What you should note about AMD is that we talk about today and not about the future. When Intel has the eight-core chip, we will have our 12-core chip out,” responded Ramkumar Subramanian, vice-president, sales and marketing, AMD India.
While he did not elaborate on the company’s plans to counter Intel’s eight-core chip, AMD, which spun off its manufacturing facilities into another entity earlier this year, is working on a new-generation server chip codenamed Bulldozer that is reportedly slated for a 2011 launch.
“As people build larger data centres, managing power and space is becoming a challenge and the need for energy efficient products is the focus now,” added Michael Goddard Server CTO and chief engineer, Products Group at AMD.
“But it is not a question of who is playing tag for this market,” observed Naveen Mishra, senior analyst at IT research firm Gartner India. Both have their own roadmaps and are working to a timetable, he observed.
But the competition also comes at a time when the global slowdown has impacted IT spends across the globe. The x86 server space, which accounted for $5.1 billion sales in quarter ending March 2009, was down 28.8% in value and 26.3% in shipments up to the period compared to the previous quarter, according to market research firm IDC Inc. Sales of all other kinds of servers were down 19.4% in sales at $4.8 billion and down 30.6% in units in the quarter.
AMD, which is looking to come out of the trough by the end of the year, in a silent move, cut prices of its earlier Opteron chips like Shanghai aggressively to take on Intel ahead of the launch of Istanbul. As part of its turnaround strategy earlier, the company also spun off its chip making units in to a separate entity and is now relying less on manufacturing muscle and more on design and right products for the market, observed an official.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}