Skip to main content

AMD Adds Virtualization, New CPUs To Desktop Line

Advanced Micro Devices officially launched its "AM2" socket upgrade on Tuesday, as the company tied its microprocessor products to next-generation DDR2 memory and added support for virtualization technology.

In support of the launch, AMD also added two new chips: an AMD64 2.8-GHz FX-62 processor, priced at $1,031, and an AMD 2.6-GHz 5000+ processor, priced at $696. Both prices represent lots of 1,000 units.

The new processors represent a true switch for AMD; the socket shift is a top-to-bottom transition made across all of AMD's desktop product lines, and neither the current 939-pin nor the older 754-pin processors will be able to connect to AM2 motherboards. According to David Schwarzbach, a product manager for AMD, Socket 754 chips will be phased out by the end of the year, and Socket 939 chips will be stockpiled until about the second half of the year, mainly for large corporate customers.

"This is really part of our rolling thunder strategy…as we work our way into the [Taiwan] Computex show in the first week of June," Schwarzbach said. The announcement follows the creation of AMD's energy-efficient processor line last week; another announcement tied to AMD's AMD Live! platform is expected before the show.

While the processors do include the first implementation of AMD's "Pacifica" virtualization technology, the chips themselves are just the first part of what AMD sees as an involved, complicated solution. Although the new processors are designed to support the operation of virtualized operating systems, other components, especially I/O peripherals such as disk drives, will need driver and O/S support to create a truly virtualized system, Schwarzbach said.

The chips will ship with embedded logic firmware that enables virtualization at the chip level, but will be designed to offer system designers the ability to offer virtualization just at the CPU level. "It's a walk before you can run strategy," Schwarzbach said. "IT will get the benefit immediately at the CPU level. It's the beginning of the enablement path, which will eventually move downstream to consumers. But first we need to get more work done, such as I/O virtualization. All devices that interface with the CPU need virtualization, and need drivers."

The new socket, tied to the new integrated DDR-2 controller, provides some performance headroom that will be filled up as AMD ramps faster processors. Although AMD's low-end Sempron will likely never use up the available bandwidth, Schwarzbach said that the shift was being made to accommodate board suppliers.

Between 15 to 30 boards in each performance segment – covering the Sempron, Athlon 64, Athlon X2, and Athlon FX lines – will be made available from AMD's board partners, including Abit, Asustek, ECS, Elitegroup, and others. Third-party chipsets, including Nvidia's first 500-series nForce chipsets, have also been launched in support of the new parts.

"Rather than a phased approach, which we could have done, which would have monopolized design resources over an extended basis, we decided to manage complexity by offering a simplified approach," Schwarzbach said.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Does light have mass?

The short answer is "no", but it is a qualified "no" because there are odd ways of interpreting the question which could justify the answer "yes". Light is composed of photons so we could ask if the photon has mass. The answer is then definitely "no": The photon is a massless particle. According to theory it has energy and momentum but no mass and this is confirmed by experiment to within strict limits. Even before it was known that light is composed of photons it was known that light carries momentum and will exert a pressure on a surface. This is not evidence that it has mass since momentum can exist without mass. [ For details see the Physics FAQ article What is the mass of the photon? ]. Sometimes people like to say that the photon does have mass because a photon has energy E = hf where h is Planck's constant and f is the frequency of the photon. Energy, they say, is equivalent to mass according to Einstein's famous formula E = m

Play against Xbox360 gamer on PC in Vista

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates on Tuesday announced a cross-platform gaming service that integrates games played on cell phones, Xbox 360 consoles and the upcoming Windows Vista operating system. The "Live Anywhere" service will be available as part of Windows Vista, Microsoft's next-generation PC operating system. The consumer version is scheduled for release early next year. "It means that you have one online community," Gates said in a news conference. "This platform can really unleash developers to do amazing new things." The system would extend the company's existing Xbox Live service for the Xbox 360 console into millions of Internet-enabled PCs and cellular phones. No pricing information on the new service was announced. In recent months, Microsoft has been pushing a number of online services that it hopes will boost revenue as markets for its traditional software become increasingly saturated. The company expects to make money off s

Hackers biting Apple

Hackers are increasingly focusing on Apple's Mac OS X, and the number of newly discovered vulnerabilities has surged. Such a switch could mean big implications for Apple's user base, which has traditionally not had to concern itself too much over security. It's been an impressively quiet year so far on the PC virus and worm front, and hackers seem to be focusing their attention elsewhere. One such area is Apple's Mac OS X. Once mostly ignored by malware developers, there appears to be a growing interest in this "alternative" OS. Details Have you noticed the dearth of serious PC virus and worm threats out there lately? Well, it isn't a figment of your imagination -- according to vnunet.com, viruses are no longer the top security threat . While serious attacks are still likely to emerge, the bottom has apparently fallen out of the PC antivirus market -- just as Microsoft begins a big push into the security market. One cause of this drop-off is solidif