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Why More Cores Matter

More cores deliver the performance you need to:

  • Effectively run multiple virtual machines (VMs)
  • Efficiently tackle cloud, virtualization and high-performance computing (HPC) applications
  • Handle demanding database and infrastructure workloads

With more cores, you can also benefit from increased memory channels, allowing you to bring in large blocks of data for processing and analysis, while enabling the processor to access data directly from memory. This is far faster than pulling data from hard drives.

With this combination, you can run additional or more robust VMs because you can allocate greater physical memory to a VM, reducing the need to swap data in and out of memory, leaving more time for processing instructions. This allows you to quickly run applications and efficiently manage demanding workloads such as cloud computing, virtualization, HPC, database and infrastructure applications.

Virtualization 

Why More Cores Matter for Virtualization

Typically, customers choose to run one VM per core for easy manageability and optimum performance, while highly robust VMs often require multiple cores. AMD Opteron processors are built to support more VMs per server for greater consolidation, which may translate into lower server acquisition costs, operational costs, power costs and data center floor space..

More cores, like what you get with the AMD Opteron™ platforms1, enable you to:

  • Support more VMs per server for greater consolidation, which may translate into lower server acquisition costs, operational costs, power costs and data center floor space
  • Create robust VMs by allocating more than one core per virtual machine


Because virtualization is memory intensive, each VM should have its own core and memory resources to successfully run applications.

AMD Opteron™ platforms supporting more memory channels2 enable:

  • Increased paths to access the information in memory
  • Reading and writing more information simultaneously over the channels 
  • Significant memory bandwidth to delilver full memory performance regardless of the server processor model in use


Server Products

Cloud Computing 

Why More Cores Matter for Cloud Computing

Cloud environments are transaction-heavy and often have need for “elastic” computing resources to rapidly scale up the number of cores for peak environments. AMD delivers platforms with specialized cloud computing features that combine outstanding energy efficiency with high core count processors to help ensure AMD-based platforms not only scale well, but do so efficiently.

Revolutionary new AMD Opteron™ platforms deliver more cores1 to help:

  • Keep response times low so the server can quickly handle numerous transactions simultaneously.
  • Scale during peak workloads while maximizing processing power, thanks to high server core density.


AMD Opteron platforms offer more memory channels2 to enable:

  • Increased paths to access the information in memory
  • Reading and writing more information simultaneously over the channels


Server Products

High Performance Computing 

Why More Cores Matter for HPC

High-performance computing (HPC) enables complex technical computations to be broken into several elements. Each core can then solve a piece of the computation.

More cores, like what you get with AMD Opteron™ 6000 series platforms1, enable you to:

  • Increase the number of parallel computations that can be done at any given time 
  • Achieve the same high-performance levels using fewer servers, saving data center space
  • Reduce operational costs through consolidation


HPC can be very compute-, memory- and data-intensive, depending on the application. For applications that require extensive memory, it is much faster to bring this data into memory instead of continually fetching the data from the hard drive.

Revolutionary “Bulldozer”-based AMD Opteron platforms deliver more memory channels2 to enable

  • Increased paths to access the information in memory
  • Reading and writing more information simultaneously over the channels


Server Products

Databases 

Why More Cores Matter for Database

More cores, like what you get with the AMD Opteron™ processors1, enable:

  • Database to run more simultaneously task 
  • The ability to input, process, analyze and report data on the same platform 
  • Consolidation of multiple databases on one server 
  • Database scaling during peak periods

Working in memory is faster than continually fetching the data from the hard drive. One goal of a database is to bring large blocks of data into memory to be processed or analyzed, cutting down disk I/O traffic.

Revolutionary new AMD Opteron platforms offer more memory channels2 to enable:

  • Increased paths to access the information in memory
  • Reading and writing more information simultaneously over the channels 
  • A database to load a larger number of records into memory for faster processing rather than swapping data back and forth from hard drives

Server Products

Infrastructure 

Why More Cores Matter for Infrastructure

With the growing popularity of virtualized infrastructure servers, it is critical to have core resources for each VM.

More cores, like what you get with AMD Opteron™ platforms1, enable:

  • The server to run more VMs simultaneously
  • The consolidation of file, print or email servers to help reduce server cost, operational cost and data center floor space.

Infrastructure servers are the backbones of most networking services that drive today’s businesses. Increasingly, infrastructure servers are being consolidated and virtualized in order to reduce operational costs.

  • The greater the consolidation, the greater potential for efficiency and cost savings.
  • To get the best performance for these virtual servers, there needs to be enough memory in the physical server.

Revolutionary new AMD Opteron platforms offer more memory channels2 enable:

  • Increased paths to access the information in memory
  • Reading and writing more information simultaneously over the channels

Server Products



  1. Based on 16-core AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor compared to 12-core AMD Opteron 6100 Series processors, and 8-core AMD Opteron 4200 Series processors compared to 6-core AMD Opteron 4100 Series processors.
  2. AMD Opteron™ 6200 Series processors have 4 memory channels per processor, while the Intel Xeon 5600 Series only has 3 memory channels. See http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/products/server/intelligentxeon/440799.htm.