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Ultimate desktop: 4 CPUs, 9 fans, 16,000 dollars

Dave Freeman — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:40:43 +0000

In one of those “what if” situations, Seattle PC company Puget Systems (of Windows 7 deal fame) recently shared information with Tom’s Hardware about how they went about building the ultimate desktop machine. Puget showed them their latest, a quad-Opteron powered monster with 32 gigs of RAM and custom water cooling. I can’t even imagine how much noise this thing would make if it was just air cooled, but the boys at Puget decided to do both and put no less then nine(!) 120mm fans on the radiator. This means that the fans can run at the minimum voltage, which keeps them very, very quiet but moves lots of air.

Tom’s has a really complete gallery and write up on the system, but here are some of the basics. It’s using a standard Cooler Master case (obviously drilled for the water cooling) and Koolance waterblocks, fluid, and pump. It’s got 6TB of space in RAID 5, and actually runs nearly silent.

Puget Systems ultimate desktop (Images credit: Tom's Hardware)

Code name Shanghai: AMD’s 45nm quad-core Opterons are here

Nicholas Deleon — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:20:08 +0000

AMD, Intel’s arch nemesis, is rolling out its first 45nm quad-core Opteron processors today. The move to 45nm brings lower power consumption (a decrease by about 35 percent) and increased (by 35 percent, too) “performance,” a term so nebulous it can mean anything.

The processor uses the code name Shanghai. The previous 65nm Opterons went by Barcelona, who are absolutely tearing up La Liga, as it were.

The new Opterons run from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz.

World’s new fastest supercomputer runs on AMD and Cell hardware

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:45:18 +0000

Yesterday we noted a test where a stripped-down Cell processor beat the pants off an Intel Core2 Quadro at an h264 transcoding task. Well, now that doesn’t seem so surprising, as the Roadrunner supercomputer built by IBM primarily with Cell processors is now calculating at the rate of one petaflop. That’s a quadrillion operations per second. I never thought I’d see the number quadrillion attached to anything real at all, but here it is.

It uses 13,000 Cell engines and 7,000 AMD dual-core Opterons, all mounted on IBM Blade servers. The statistics are impressive (for instance, it weighs 500,000 pounds) but I’ll let you check them out for yourself. I think they’re going to using them to “extend the life of our nuclear stockpile.” What a noble endeavor!

Keep your datacenter green with AMD’s quad-core Opteron

Jason Mosley — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:58:09 +0000

If you’re a datacenter manager with power consumption on your list of things to reduce, then you’re in luck. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced Monday it will be releasing, low-power(High Efficient) quad-core Opteron processors, targeted at servers.

The processor has a thermal envelope of only 55 watts, other quad-core processors have higher thermal envelopes of 105 watts or 75 watts. It will come in two flavors, a 2300 series are designed for servers with two processors, and a 8300 series designed for servers with four to eight processors.

AMD better keep and eye on Intel: back in March they announced a high efficient quad-core Xeon processors with a thermal envelope of 50 watts.

Intel and Cray getting in bed together – wait, Cray?

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:20:06 +0000

Who knew that Cray was still a player in the supercomputing field? Not only that, but they’re making news. Cray computers have been using AMD processors for a while now, but Intel has convinced them to include Xeons in their 2010-scheduled "Cascade" series of machines instead of the current Opteron configuration. Getting Cray isn’t exactly a lethal blow to AMD, but it’s another in the thousand cuts the company has been suffering due to a double pummeling by Intel and Nvidia. However, Cray hasn’t been taken seriously since they took the loveseats off their computers.

AMD-based Dells

John Biggs — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:40:39 +0000

Attention AMD fans, Dell announced today that it will be building desktops and 2P server with AMD processors. Reports have estimated that Dell will prepare between 1 million and 1.2 million new AMD based desktops, and 800,000 AMD based notebooks.

This is a huge step for AMD, but rumor has it that it is a ploy by Dell to encourage Intel to lower their prices on processors and not an actual move to make AMD a major provider of chips. AMD, however, is optimistic and believes that Dell and its customers will find more satisfaction with the introduction of these processors. The AMD desktops and notebooks should hit the Dell store within a month–just in time to get all the support issues dealt with before the holiday season.

UPDATE 2: Dell to ship AMD-based desktop PCs in September[tgdaily]