Posted on 09/22/2009 6:28:45 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Now that virtualization has become a key driver of x64 server sales, the ability to live-migrate workloads from machines using older chip generation to newer and future ones is important to data centers - which is why AMD's latest nerd porn demonstrates its Opteron architecture performing inter-generational migrations.
The company's future twelve-shooter Magny-Cours Opteron processor, due in 2010's Opteron 6000 series servers using the G34 socket and related chipset, is featured in the latest AMD video.
Magny-Cours, by the way, is not really a twelve-shooter as much as it's two six-shooters sharing the same holster.
The demo stars Ron Meyers, product marketing manager for AMD's server and workstation business, and puts VMware's latest ESX Server 4.0 hypervisor on a bunch of different Opteron boxes from Dell, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard. A video workload running on a system using the old two-core Rev E Opterons from a few years back is live-migrated to a new system using the six-core Istanbul Opterons.
Then, before the video even gets warm on the Istanbul box, Meyers live-migrates it using the VMotion feature of ESX Server onto a prototype Opteron 6000 system using the Magny-Cours chips.
OK, admittedly, this is not particularly exciting, but we're in the dog days of a slow-news summer.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
AMD chipsets: the feeds and speeds
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X64 chip seller Advanced Micro Devices launched its "Fiorano" family of homegrown server chipsets yesterday, but many of the technical details of the three different chipsets were not available at press time. El Reg has finally got its hands on the specs.
AMD was originally expected to come out with one chipset, which is based on technology the company got through its acquisition of ATI Technologies, which made PC, workstation, and server chipsets as well as graphics cards.
Late last year and earlier this year, the Fiorano platform was described as the SR5690 I/O hub. This supported the 'IOMMU' I/O virtualisation technology, PCI-Express 2.0 peripheral slots, and the SP5100 southbridge, for linking to USB and SATA ports and offering legacy PCI slots. This Fiorano platform was created to support any Rev F socket and includes HyperTransport 3 links. For all practical purposes, the Fiorano chipsets are aimed at quad-core "Shanghai" and six-core "Istanbul" Opterons, which have HT3 links on them (which can deliver 5.2 GT/sec of bandwidth).
These chips support DDR2 main memory, and when the "Magny-Cours" Opteron 6000 (eight and twelve cores) and "Lisbon" Opteron 4000 (four and six cores) are available next year, they will have DDR3 main memory controllers and will reach out to DDR3 main memory through those HT3 links, offering memory performance that is more in balance with the faster interconnect.
AMD yesterday launched three different chipsets, which included two other I/O hubs - the SR5650 and the SR5670 - that are paired with the SP5100 southbridge. All three pairings support PCI-Express 2.0 v1.0 peripheral slots and have SMP support built in as well. They all sport AMD Vi virtualisation technology, including IOMMU v1.2 support, and all three can be used to support a variety of processor sockets. These include the 1,207-pin Rev F socket (for Opterons used in workstations and servers), the 941-pin AM3 socket (for Phenom II processors used in single-socket PCs and workstations), the future C32 socket for Opteron 4000 chips, and the future G34 socket for Opteron 6000 processors.
The main differences between the three pairings have to do with how many PCI-Express engines are on the chip, how many PCI-Express lanes they deliver, and how much juice the I/O hub burns.
>> OK, admittedly, this is not particularly exciting, but we’re in the dog days of a slow-news summer.
Well, that depends whether or not you’re into nerd porn.
Curious about live migration. Never tried it - though, I’ve resurrected tar’d images.
This technology provides a great way to scale back on hardware and save on power costs.
The migrations I was involved in were brutal...Main Frame types....
>> The migrations I was involved in were brutal...Main Frame types....
I believe it.
I figure a migration would probably go ok if the target hardware configuration was similar to the host and the hypervisor versions matched.
Where the heck can I get a 4 socket motherboard for my ATX form factor minitower case?
Thought F1 was going back to Magny-Cours for a sec.
I’ve no idea...maybe you need one of those ATX extended Mobo....or check Tyan,...or Supermicro...
Pulling the same thing as Intel did when it first came out with dual-core chips. They sucked.
doh...
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