The Opteron processor family has just gotten a little bigger: AMD has added five new models, all of which offer slightly higher clock speeds and higher performance than the previous flagships in the same series—and without stepping into larger power envelopes. AMD introduced the new CPUs earlier this morning, and here they are:
Model | Cores | Clock speed | Peak Turbo speed | L3 cache | TDP | Price |
6284 SE | 16 | 2.7GHz | 3.4GHz | 16MB | 140W | $1,265 |
6278 | 16 | 2.4GHz | 3.3GHz | 16MB | 115W | $989 |
4276 HE | 8 | 2.6GHz | 3.6GHz | 8MB | 65W | $455 |
4240 | 6 | 3.4GHz | 3.8GHz | 8MB | 95W | $316 |
4230 | 6 | 2.9GHz | 3.7GHz | 8MB | 65W | $377 |
(I’m not sure what to call the last one in the list. AMD’s announcement calls it the Opteron 4230, but the company’s Processor Model Numbers page dubs it the Opteron 4230 HE. The HE suffix makes sense considering the power envelope, I suppose, so it’s probably correct.)
These new models all have base and peak Turbo speeds exactly 100MHz higher than previous top-of-the-line offerings. For instance, the new Opteron 6284 SE slots in above the old Opteron 6282 SE, which runs at 2.6GHz with a 3.3GHz top Turbo speed and a 140W TDP. The faster chips are more expensive, of course. For example, the 6284 SE costs $1,265, compared to $1,019 for the 6282 SE.
AMD says these quicker Opterons are going to show up in 11 new servers from its partners, and two of those machines will be HP systems based on the PC maker’s ProLiant Gen8 platform. They’ll include the ProLiant Gen8 DL385p, a "performance-based rack server," and the ProLiant Gen8 BL465c, a blade server that can enable a core density of 2,000 cores per rack. Both of those HP servers are tuned for virtualization, database, and HPC workloads, AMD says.