AMD Opteron Coverage - Part 3: The First Servers Arrive

Final Words

Solutions like the HPC-targeted Appro 1100H or the HPC/webserver Einux A1740 will continue to do well in markets that have been previously tailored to by the Athlon MP. The added performance offered by the Opteron processor and the AMD64 platform in general will ensure that companies like Appro and Einux will be able to move these boxes as quickly as possible.

What is necessary however is more solutions based on designs like the Newisys 2100; fully manageable, high-performance Opteron designs that can go head-to-head with the best from Intel's EPSD. The amount of validation that is done within Intel's EPSD will be difficult to mimic, however it is absolutely necessary if the Opteron is to be a true success in the server market.

The need for Newisys-style boxes will continue to grow as AMD launches their 4-way Opteron server platforms. Customers that are running multimillion dollar databases will not put their faith in a server, regardless of how fast or how affordable, without proper validation tests and extremely flexible server management; in these cases, time is most definitely money and downtime is, well, clearly the opposite.

We did not publish a performance comparison between the three servers in this article simply because they perform identically, assuming you configure them with identical hardware.

For more information on the Opteron's performance in an enterprise environment be sure to check out Part 2 of our ongoing Opteron coverage, as well as Part 1 if you're curious as to exactly what goes on beneath the hood of AMD's latest architecture.