ATCA to improve network traffic with AMD Opteron Processors

By in Computer Peripherals

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To enable enhanced network performance of industry-standard Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) blade servers, at an ATCA summit, AMD unveiled new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors.

The processor operates at 50 and 71W TDP, supplying high-performance, low-power platform for the networking and telecommunications market. The new AMD server chipset features PCI Express 2.0 and HyperTransport 3 technology, thereby offering an entire solution with superior I/O capabilities to boost performance as opposed to previous-generation platforms.

Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server and Embedded Business, AMD, commented, “The increased bandwidth offered by PCI Express 2.0 is useful in improving network data throughput when combined with an appropriate increase in the number of CPUs or CPU cores to help accurately route the additional traffic. The Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor delivers this compute power and with 50W and 71W versions available, is a great option for the 200W power budget of the ATCA specification.”

Erik Heikkila, Director, Embedded Hardware and Systems, VDC Research, stated, “Our research shows the market for ATCA applications remains quite strong, despite the downturn. This is in part due to the industry’s shift from proprietary designs to interoperable standards and commercial off the shelf building blocks. Improvements to AMD’s blade platform are a great example of this building block concept. Customers who have implemented a previous AMD Opteron processor-based ATCA system now have the option to further extend their design with an easy upgrade.”

Patrick Welzien, vice president, Engineering, Diversified Technology mentioned that with the new AMD embedded platform, finer performance on high-bandwidth networks can be delivered and yet uphold the stringent overall system power limit of the ATCA requirement. Recently launched blade, ATC6239, features two 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors and by depending on this scalable COTS platform, the life of the system could be prolonged and cost efficiencies may be identified.