HP launches four-way Opteron system

On the first birthday of AMD's Opteron, Hewlett-Packard has become the first major vendor to offer a four-processor server based on the 64-bit chip.

HP's new ProLiant DL585 is a 4U, Opteron-powered sister product to its Xeon-based DL580. The server will have two more PCI-X than the 580, and will support up to 64GB of memory -- 32GB more than the DL580, according to HP Group Manager for ProLiant Systems Steve Cumings.

Because of differences between Opteron and Xeon, however, the DL585 will not have the memory protection features of the Xeon system. "Because of the Opteron architecture, you have the memory controller on the processor itself, so it's not actually possible to deliver Hot-Plug memory in the way we've done it with the Intel processors," Cumings said.

The DL580's Hot-Plug feature lets the system replace a failed memory unit on the server, Cumings explained.

High-performance computer users have embraced dual-processor Opteron systems, using them as inexpensive 64-bit components in large computing clusters, but HP's four-way system may now extend Opteron's appeal into the enterprise, said Mark Melenovsky, an analyst at IDC.

Four-way systems on the market today are typically designed for enterprise users running packaged applications and who have not yet embraced the Opteron processor, Melenovsky said. "It's going to be an interesting battleground for AMD and for Opteron against Intel," he said. "Users are strongly wedded to Intel and the Intel brand."

By not breaking binary compatibility with the millions of existing 32-bit applications, Opteron has given customers a less painful route to 64-bit computing than the one provided by Intel's Itanium 2 processor. AMD's hardware is also uniquely positioned to take advantage of the move toward clustered applications.

Opteron systems accounted for only about 800 of the 228,000 four-way x86 servers that shipped in 2003, Melenovsky said. And while IDC has not estimated how many four-way Opteron systems will ship in the year ahead, it expects the total x86 four-way market to grow to 245,000 units in 2004, fueled in part by the new HP system, as well as a planned four-way Opteron server from Sun, which is expected by the end of June.