Industry's "Best CPU" Speeds Up, Stays Cool, Outperforms Competition

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - February 14, 2011) - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the immediate availability of five new members of the AMD Opteron™ 6100 Series processor family that specifically address rising demand for low-power, balanced systems for SMBs and increased performance-per-dollar-per-watt for enterprise and public sector environments. Key partners including Acer, Dell and HP are launching new or refreshed AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform-based systems this quarter, powered by these new 12- and 8-core AMD Opteron processors. 

"These new server CPUs deliver greater performance than we've ever had before," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server Business, AMD. "When we launched the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms last year, we eliminated the '4P tax' and met market demands for higher performance-per-dollar-per-watt. Our customers' benchmarks and testimonials bear out these improvements, and these five new parts -- and the rave reviews -- prove that we continue to deliver on our vision."

• The two new AMD Opteron HE processors meet market demand for highly scalable, power-efficient systems that are especially well suited for Web serving, virtualization and cloud computing workloads.
• The new AMD Opteron SE processor enables increased performance in key environments such as HPC, financial services, database and newly virtualized datacenters.
• These processors are socket-compatible with the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform, as will be AMD's upcoming 16-core "Bulldozer"-based Opteron processors.
• AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform-based systems powered by the new AMD Opteron processors are available now from OEMs and system builders, including Acer, Appro, Cray Inc., Colfax, Dawning, Dell, HP, Microway, NCS Technologies, Inc., Nor-Tech, Penguin, SGI, Silicon Mechanics and ZT Systems.
• Servers using the AMD Opteron 6000 Series platforms are delivering excellent performance, value, and energy efficiency, outperforming Intel Xeon processor-based servers on numerous key server benchmarks, including SPECint®_rate2006, SPECfp®_rate2006, and TPC-C Value (Price/tpmC).¹ Learn more about server benchmarks here.
  • Two-processor servers using these latest AMD Opteron™ processors outperform Intel Xeon 5680 ("Westmere") processor-based servers on eight key server benchmarks. ²
    • SPECint®_rate2006¹
    • SPECint®_rate_base2006¹
    • SPECfp®_rate2006¹
    • SPECfp®_rate_base2006¹
    • SPECjbb®2005²
    • TPC-C Value (Price/TpmC) ¹
    • TPC-H Value (Price/QphH) ²
    • SPECpower™_ssj2008 power consumption²
• The AMD Opteron 6000 Series platform's core scalability and efficient architecture helped enable the new Dell PowerEdge C6145 server to set a new performance record for 2U servers. The Dell PowerEdge C6145 has more than doubled the previous record for SPECfp®_rate2006 performance in a 2U server. ³

Recent accolades for AMD's server CPUs include third-party organizations naming the AMD Opteron 6100 Series processor "Best CPU" of 2011 for parallel processing, calling out the AMD Opteron powered Dell PowerEdge R815 as 2010 Server of the Year and awarding it a Silver Award for Server Hardware.

Supporting Resources

• Press Kit
• AMD@Work blog
• Learn Why You Should "Love Your IT Today"
• AMD Blog on Dense Server Environments
• Dell Blog on AMD Opteron-based Dell PowerEdge 6145
• AMD Server Benchmark Decoder Blog
• Latest AMD Benchmark Scores
• AMDUnprocessed YouTube Channel
• Follow @AMDOpteron on Twitter
• AMD Flickr Stream
• Learn More about AMD Opteron Processor Performance

About AMD
AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its ground-breaking AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs). AMD's graphics and computing technologies power a variety of solutions including PCs, game consoles and the servers that drive the Internet and businesses. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Other names are for informational purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

¹ SPEC, SPECint, and SPECfp are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. The results for AMD Opteron™ processor Model 6180 SE are based upon data submitted to Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation as of February 3, 2011. The other results reflect data published on www.spec.org as of February 3, 2011. The SPECint_rate2006, SPECint_rate_base2006, SPECfp_rate2006, and SPECfp_rate_base2006 comparisons are based on the best performing two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6180 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680, operating at each processor's default frequency. For the latest SPEC results, visit www.spec.org.
TPC-C and tpmC are trademarks of the Transaction Performance Council. The Price/tpmC result reflects data published on www.tpc.org as of February 3, 2011. The comparison is based on the best performing two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6176 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680.

² SPEC, SPECjbb, and SPECpower are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. The results reflect data published on www.spec.org as of February 3, 2011. The SPECjbb2005 comparison presented above is based on the best performing two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6176 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680, operating at each processor's default frequency. The SPECpower_ssj2008 comparison is based on two-socket servers with the lowest average power at 100% of target load (126W and 409496 ssj_ops at 100% of target load and 2106 overall ssj_ops/watt using 2 x AMD Opteron processor Model 4164 EE and 138W and 452043 ssj_ops at 100% of target load and 2118 overall ssj_ops/watt using 2 x Intel Xeon processor Model L5630).
TPC-H and QphH are trademarks of the Transaction Performance Council. The Price/QphH results stated above reflect results published on www.tpc.org as of February 3, 2011. The comparisons presented above are based on the best performing two-socket servers using AMD Opteron™ processors Model 6176 SE and Intel Xeon processors Model X5680. For the latest TPC results, visit www.tpc.org. 

³ The results for the Dell PowerEdge C6145 server are based upon data submitted to Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation as of February 14, 2011 and data published on www.spec.org as of February 3, 2011. The SPECfp_rate2006 comparison is based on the best performing 8-chip x86 servers.

Contact Information:

Contact:
Julie Lass
AMD Public Relations
512-602-9934