AMD Opteron Roadkill threatens

Intel's problem is not if it is going to deliver, it is pretty well surmised at this point in time that stepping 4 of the Prescott, the one with ia32E (read iAMD64 or x86-64) enabled, is in reality Nocona and that stepping 4 appears to be a very done deal.

No the problem is that the very same stepping 4 is being shown around the world is attached to a heatsink that doubles as a small boat anchor attached to a fan recently liberated from a wind tunnel.

Now in the world of consumers who use a single processor this device and its associated socket and new board, case and power supply requirements are a very minor inconvenience but in the server world, where at a minimum we need two of these puppies, life is an awful lot bleaker.

The first big problem is the BTX (board for LGA775 socket spec) board and case layout. The board and case are so optimized that it is not possible to put two processors on a board and maintain airflow within BTX specifications.

This is going to breed a disaster. We have made as much progress as we have in the area of small servers over the last two decades because the standard motherboard layout (AT, ATX) could be adapted to two processors and thus everything from cases to powersupplies could be used interchangeably.

Now, at a minimum, the motherboard suppliers of dual motherboards will also have to supply either customised heatsinks and fans or special air ducting which is going to interfere with cabling. Additionally extra case fans may be required thus obviating dual CPU boards in general purpose cases.

But this is not even the start of the problems. Given the current heat dissipation of the Prescott/Nocona and the fact that blade servers are passively cooled the probability of seeing Nocona running at full speed and thus ia32E in a blade, is hovering real close to zero at this point in time.

The situation with 1U and 2U servers is nearly as bad, although the processors here are actively cooled the thermal capabilities of the case is such that the 30% increase in heat is way above any margins in the current design. It took three months of work to develop a cooling system that would properly cool Xeon MP servers and the current designs are stressing today's state of the art.

While a second tier manufacturer could allow the processor to go into thermal limiting (process whereby the CPU, sensing it is too hot, reduces its clock rate until it cools down) a first tier manufacturer would rightly get sued for selling a system as a dual 3.6 GHz server when the CPU spends most of its life thermally limited to 900 MHz.

The problems are, then, a) can a 1U dual Nocona be cooled at all, b) if so when and what do we give up (heat piping and fans takes up space so features would have to be cut out) and c) can you be in the same room without hearing protection. And you thought the fans on an IBM x345 2U Xeon DP were loud when you tested the high temperature sensor.

Another problem for poor Intel is that it has been holding its own against AMD only by vending server chips with huge L3 caches in order to get performance up. Large L3 caches for Prescott/Nocona will not be available until Intel finishes Potomac (Prescott Xeon MP) almost a year from now so Nocona comes out at an immediate performance disadvantage with respect to the Opteron.

The only thing currently saving Intel is that none of the Big Three -- Dell, HP, IBM -- have enterprise ready servers available for the Opteron. Yes, IBM has a very pretty 1U dual Opteron server (built by MSI by the way and they also have a better version available than the one the sell to IBM) but they only have it because the boys doing grid processing threatened to shop elsewhere if they did not come up with one. And yes, HP has introduced a very nicely priced low end utility 1U dual Opteron server, but neither are supplying Opteron servers with the features needed by enterprise customers.

Nor are they supplying tower servers.

The only other major who is supplying Opteron gear, Sun, is simply re-labelling enterprise quality gear from a new second tier manufacturer Newisys. The problem here is that Sun charges far too much for these boxes and Newisys, which designs fantastic gear, is too small to design and field a complete line so a 2U box and tower boxes are not available from them. It has also decided to be a wholesaler only which means they will never be a serious player and an operation an enterprise can trust.

As I understand it Compaq was started by people formerly with IBM who had an idea about how to do it better and cheaper and went on to beat IBM at its own game, and now Newisys was started by people from IBM who had an idea about how to do it better and cheaper. The first company that gets an enterprise line of Opteron boxes out there for the dominate operating system, Windows Server, is going to win big.

Intel does not have the goods nor will they have the goods to compete for nearly a year. Everyone else is going to be Opteron roadkill. µ