AMD Announces Broad Vendor Support For Upcoming Dual-Core Solutions

March 9, 2005

AMD today announced that the industry's leading operating system vendors are preparing their respective operating systems to support the upcoming introduction of AMD64 dual-core products.
All the leading operating systems currently available today are expected to have versions of their software that will immediately work out-of-the-box with the planned launch of the dual-core AMD Opteron processor with Direct Connect Architecture in mid-2005. These operating systems include Microsoft Windows, Novell and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions, and Sun Microsystems' Solaris 10. Some of the operating systems will include optimizations that specifically enable applications to take even greater advantage of AMD64 multi-core capabilities, providing improved performance across a range of applications.

“With our upcoming AMD64 dual-core processors, AMD yet again will deliver a technology that customers demand and, unlike competing architectures, is doing so in a way that makes it incredibly easy and non-disruptive for them to implement,” said Marty Seyer, corporate vice president and general manager of Microprocessor Business Unit, Computation Products Group, AMD. “Designed from the ground up to support multi-core capability, AMD64 dual-core processors will be uniquely compatible with, and upgradeable from, our single-core processors today. This support from our OS partners underscores the simplicity of migrating to AMD64 dual core.”

“Customers want to be able to take advantage of innovative technologies, such as AMD64-based systems and dual-core processors, in a cost-effective manner,” said Bob Kelly, general manager of Windows Server Group, Microsoft Corporation. “Working with partners such as AMD, Microsoft consistently delivers to the Windows platform customers the best price/performance in the industry. Based on industry benchmarks, the Windows platform has delivered a 200x performance improvement at 1/17 th the cost during the past seven years. The combination of Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions and upcoming AMD64 multi-core processors will continue to drive even better performance, giving customers the ability to get more value out of their 32-bit and 64-bit applications.”

“Novell's SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 empowers businesses by delivering a scalable, high-performance foundation for secure enterprise computing,” said Markus Rex, vice president and general manager for SUSE LINUX in Novell. “Novell has taken a lead in optimizing Linux for AMD64 dual-core technology and our current version of enterprise Linux is ready today with this support.”

“Our latest release, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, is focused on delivering unprecedented levels of performance, scalability, security and platform stability,” said Brian Stevens, vice president of Operating Systems Engineering at Red Hat. “Our first planned upgrade to this distribution will further enhance the user experience by leveraging the muscle of AMD64 dual-core technology. This upgrade is scheduled to be available when AMD releases its dual-core AMD Opteron processors.”

“Solaris 10 is a recognized leader in SMP support and is uniquely positioned to harness the power of AMD64 multi-core technology," said Tom Goguen, vice president, Operating Platforms Group, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Sun supports AMD and stands behind its approach to license software by the processor -- not by the core."

AMD has consistently recommended that software vendors license their applications and operating systems by the processor, not by the number of processor cores. This is a customer-centric approach that will help facilitate the broad adoption of multi-core technology, enabling users to easily and economically migrate to multi-core computing from their current single-core systems.

AMD's leadership with multi-core processors follows the company's success with 64-bit computing. Both innovations illustrate the strategic focus to solve customer challenges while also providing technology breakthroughs to fuel the possibilities of tomorrow. AMD's approach to putting multiple cores on a single processor is based on an evolutionary next step that magnifies the architectural benefits of AMD's current single-core processors.

AMD's Direct Connect Architecture, which directly links processors to memory, I/O and cache, helps eliminate traditional bottlenecks and greatly reduces the memory latency. Now AMD is directly connecting two cores on a single processor. With multi-core processors seamlessly sharing the memory controller, AMD's multi-core processors can generate a measurable performance boost due to the architecture. AMD64 technology also will give AMD multi-core processors greater speed and memory accessibility in either 32-bit or 64-bit environments.

AMD plans to introduce its dual-core AMD Opteron processor in mid-2005, followed by dual-core client processors beginning in the second half of 2005.