Advanced Micro Devices is projected to release its new chip for servers on Monday, the 14th of February. It is claimed that in addition to higher clock-speed the new Opteron will sport higher-speed HT bus as well as SSE3 technology.
The forthcoming AMD Opteron processor 252 will be clocked at 2.60GHz, will incorporate dual-channel PC3200 memory controller, 1MB of cache and SSE3 technology, something that only Intel Corp.’s chips have sported so far. The upcoming Opteron chip will also sport 1000MHz HyperTransport bus, a speed boost over contemporary AMD Opteron products with 800MHz HT bus, according to CNET News.com web-site. The new chip for servers and workstations will be produced using 90nm SOI process technology.
SSE3 is an instruction set found in Intel Pentium 4 processors code-named Prescott. SSE3 includes 13 new instructions developed for some specific tasks. While guidelines that allowed software makers to take advantage of the SSE3 emerged in mid-2003, actual programs that take advantage of the SSE3 today is not large.
Due to higher speed HT bus it is unclear whether AMD Opteron 252 and its possible derivatives – AMD Opteron 152 and 852 as well as higher-speed models – are drop-in compatible with existing infrastructure based on AMD8000-series of chips. AMD has consistently stated that its future Opteron products, including dual-core products, would be compatible with servers, workstations and mainboards build upon AMD8000-series logic that officially supports only 800MHz HyperTransport bus. AMD declined to comment on the current news-story.
Source: X-Bit Labs
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