I’m sure we’ve all heard the expression “that truck’s got nuts.” For those that haven’t, that simply means that the truck in question is very powerful. Most vehicles \”with nuts\” usually have more than one of everything: eight cylinders, dual exhaust systems, the list goes on and on.
That same expression can be applied to computers. Where high power is needed (servers and workstations), multiple systems are the norm. Six hard drives, dual ram channels, and 2 or more processors. In the x86 server market, Intel has always held the crown (and 100% of the market share). Within the next few months, AMD will attempt to change this by producing a processor based upon their AMD Athlon that will be able to run in dual configuration. It’s known by variuos names; it’s code name “Palamino”, the AthlonMP, and the Athlon4 (bypassing the Athlon 2 and 3, which weren’t really needed in the first place). The name doesn’t really matter, just like the color of a truck. What matters is what\’s inside!
The Northbridge to CPU relationship of the AMD and Intel multiple processing platforms can be summarized by my infamous interstate analogy. Think of the processor, either Intel or AMD, as the source of a large amount of traffic (downtown at 5:00) and the Northbridge as the destination (home). The Intel processors (downtowns) all share the same interstate…just like PCI cards all share the same PCI bus. Remember, AMD inherited many of the motherboard qualities from the now extinct Alpha platform (jeers to Compaq for discontinuing the Alpha processor), so each processor (downtown) has it’s own bus (interstate) to connect to the Northbridge. This of course will reduce traffic jams, or what is commonly referred to by engineers as bottlenecks. There are also many disadvantages to the AMD platform when it comes to the server market: support. My real world job (yes folks, pcmech.com isn’t my real job…it pays worse than a volunteer job…and I need to eat…really!) has a total of 5 servers for use in managing and controlling 600 computer lab workstations. Excluding our test server, which is actually a Small Form factor Dell workstation that we commandeered for such a purpose, all of our servers were built to be servers…dual processor capabilities…special RAM, SCSI Hard drives, and INTEL processors. It is going to be an uphill battle for AMD to gain the support of the main server manufacturers and be included in major production and sale of such servers - which is where the money is.
Time will tell if the AthlonMP processor will gain support…if it does at all. I feel that it is an advantage not to have RAMBUS DRAM as a trailing platform. Many other factors come into consideration, including the stability of the chipset (only known working MP chipset for the Athlon is the AMD 762 which is currently very expensive). As an AMD stockholder and home enthusiast, I can only hope that AMD gains market share and that someday I’ll know of someone who owns an AMD based server. As a server administrator, I can only pray for stability and will pay top dollar to achieve it because of the sheer fact that I don’t like getting calls at 11:00 at night saying that no one in our computer labs can print because the File/print server is down due to a hardware failure.
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