At Hot Chips, AMD broke out some more details on its upcoming Magny-Cours server chip. The processor is a dual-die, single package combining two Istanbul dies under the same roof in a highly complex mesh of HT and cache links.
As announced by Pat Conway at Hot Chips, AMD's highest concern is to maintain things within the same power envelope as its Istanbul predecessor which, by the way, is a 75W part. To do that AMD will have to bring down clock speeds and voltages as well as tweak power management.
According to Teresa Osborne, AMD PR for Server & Embedded processors, "our goal is to hold the power consumption of Magny-Cours consistent with Istanbul and that will happen with lower initial core speed and some new power management features". Consistent needn't mean identical, but more than one AMD rep has spoken about this lately and they have certainly hinted at it.
We'd like to see a 75W dodeca-processor, who wouldn't?
Magny-Cours has been confirmed to have a quad DDR3-1333 memory controller - or rather, two channels per die - instead of the previous dual-channel DDR2-667 of Istanbul, increasing memory bandwidth considerably. It will also continue AMD's most notable single-chipset tradition with the SR5690 server set that will also be used by its successor, Interlagos, which ironically is the name of another Formula One race track. Current Socket F systems will co-exist alongside G34 systems.
AMD will also break with its old nomenclature system, as it will unify all the Opteron families under one series in a one-size-fits-all strategy. That means no more 2xxx or 8xxx, mates.
Here's hoping that AMD doesn't decide to call its new processor lineup nomenclature the Opteron F1.