Posted on 10/26/2002 5:04:56 AM PDT by JameRetief
Is AMD now ready to impact the enterprise space?
Part two Would you switch to AMD?
[To read Part One click here]
By : Wednesday 23 October 2002, 17:59
Rackspace: An AMD success story
The company founders were fully aware of the capital-intensive nature of this business. So to maximize their investment, Rackspace chose to build its own servers. "The truth is, servers sometimes have problems. By building our own, we know them inside out. Plus, by standardizing on parts, we have a constant inventory of what we need. If a server fails, we'll fix it in 30 minutes," Condon said. The process of finding the best price-to-performance ratios possible led them to AMD processors. "People have become much more receptive to the AMD brand. Megahertz to megahertz, I believe the AMD chips are actually faster for most of the applications our customers will be running on their servers," said Condon.
If you had not read between the lines of what Condon was saying, let me explain: AMD's Athlon was not introduced until August 1999. Rackspace was launched in October 1998. In March 2001, Condon said (bottom of second page), "In fact, we have well over 1500 AMD-based servers that have been up and running 24 hours a day for over two years with no downtime whatsoever." That means Rackspace used AMD K6-2 processors to launch and successfully develop its business. That is a remarkable testament to the faith that Rackspace had in AMD and its rugged K6-2 design.
It should not be forgotten that AMD’s K6-2 was also used by Cobalt Networks, which is now owned by Sun, in its very successful range of enterprise class appliance servers. Compaq, Toshiba America/Japan, and Fujitsu used mobile versions of this chip for business class notebooks. Even NEC Japan, the country's leading PC maker, had the vision to see the commercial world potential of the K6-2. This PC vendor sold K6-2 systems into the small and medium business markets.
Today, Rackspace is now the second largest Web hosting provider, and the servers it manages have now doubled to over 6,000. The current promotion that Rackspace is running shows that 97% of their customers would recommend them, it has had 100% network uptime for the last 18 months, and in that period it has been continuously profitable. Not bad for a company that only recommends AMD Athlon-based servers when matched with either Windows 2000, Linux, or free BSD for its "Dedicated Hosting" environment. In fact, because of the belief that Rackspace has in AMD's platform quality, that part of its business does not offer an Intel processor-based solution on its Web site.
The faith that Rackspace has in AMD and its partner's technology also highlights an important lesson that others can learn from: Rackspace has proved over a four year period that AMD processor-based technology is more than robust enough to be used in a mission critical environment. Because of this, when IT buyers have the option of either an Intel or AMD-based solution that meets their needs, they can focus their buying decision on two key areas - cost and delivered performance. Rackspace understood this when it was launched four years ago, and their record demonstrates that their strategic plan, which included AMD processor-based systems, was right on the mark.
On its Web site, Rackspace offers two types of Web hosting services: "Dedicated Hosting" offers managed platforms for basic applications which require dedicated servers. "Complex Hosting" gives the choice of managed platforms for integrators and complex ebusinesses which includes clustering, load balancing, and firewalls. In June, Rackspace launched "Intensive Hosting," a new division, which will provide proactive managed hosting exclusively on the Microsoft platform. Last August, Dell won a large server and storage contract to supply Rackspace with its hardware infrastructure. The press release says that Rackspace had deployed Dell PowerEdge servers to support complex enterprise architectures over recent months. From this and the explosive growth reported, I would suggest that this new kit will be used in the Complex and Intensive Hosting parts of the Rackspace business, which would mean AMD still remains dominant in Dedicated Hosting.
The press release has an interesting comment that needs to be expanded upon. It said, "Terms of the multi-million dollar agreement ensure that Rackspace will receive early access to Dell technology..." I know this is a shot in the dark, but could this include AMD's Hammer technology? Dell is evaluating Hammer, and AMD is a strategic partner of Rackspace, which would mean that it has probably already received a Hammer system for evaluation. If this is true and Hammer gets adopted, then we will all have to be patient and wait for an announcement.
When one looks back at what Michael Dell said about the AMD environment being "too fragile," it is ironic that the very systems that Dell criticized as having this disposition, are probably working side by side with Dell systems, and all in the very same building!
AMD lands Cray for its upcoming Opteron processor
If this is not a sign of things to come then I don't know what is. This sort of endorsement for a product that is not yet commercially available is awe-inspiring. If there were any doubts about the ability of Hammer to deliver on its promises, then this design win resolves all those concerns. Cray Inc., the premier provider of supercomputing solutions for customers' most challenging scientific and engineering problems; you really can't better that kind of endorsement. Big iron doesn't get any bigger or better than what Cray delivers to its customers.
Intel claims that the Hammer family targets its IA-32 servers rather than its Itanium. Well, Intel needs to think again. That particular assertion has just been well and truly blown out of the water. This one order eclipses all that Itanium has been able to achieve to date. In fact, this 10K Opteron order is probably larger than all Itanium processors that have been sold.
This AMD win should have been prime Itanium territory, so what went wrong? What has Intel got to show for its near decade worth of R&D and its billion dollar investment? A white elephant? Many would think so. How long before Itanium starts to make some serious sales traction and begins to pay back the return on its massive investment? Opteron is not even out of the blocks and it's already scored a very significant design win. This win has really upset the 64-bit apple cart, AMD looks to have won the first round. Will AMD be the last man standing?
Still not convinced? Many are.
JAK Films, the company responsible for the digital pre-visualization of Star Wars Episodes II and III, relied on AMD technology to bring Star Wars Episode II to the big screen. "Pre-visualization serves two primary purposes -- to sell a concept and save time and money," said Daniel Gregoire, head of Lucas' previsualization lab. "Our goal was to paint an accurate picture of what 'Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones' would look like long before filming was even started. Our AMD Athlon MP processor-based systems are ideal for running the extremely powerful software we rely upon," said Gregoire. "People who visit our lab can see how, using these systems, we are able to answer almost all of the creative questions from the start of shooting to the end of postproduction."
Boeing Space and Communications acquired a new AMD Athlon-based supercomputing cluster from Linux NetworX to perform aerodynamics analyses for a new family of Delta IV rockets. "We chose the AMD Athlon processor to support our CFD [computational fluid dynamics] analyses because its architectural advantages, such as dual, point-to-point frontside bus and the nine-issue fully pipelined, superscalar floating point engine core, could significantly reduce the time required for massive calculations," said Scott Ward, Manager of Aerodynamics for Delta IV.
Mark A. Brown, vice president of technology for Rhythm & Hues Studios, the Academy Award-winning visual effects and computer animation house, expressed his praise about the AMD-based systems his company had purchased: "I knew I wanted Linux on the desktop. I started looking for the best price/performance. We looked at AMD processor-based systems and found they did quite well. The systems we looked at from Angstrom Micro ran dual processors and ran them brilliantly. So we started examining the systems more carefully by running render and display evaluations, and the AMD Athlon MP processors were as fast as the competition. So we went and got a rack of AMD processor-based systems. My animators screamed for more." Using this technology, Rhythm & Hues was able to bring Scooby Doo to the cinema world.
DaimlerChrysler's crash simulation team selected the AMD Athlon MP platform for its enterprise class applications. "We evaluated many solutions and concluded that the AMD Athlon MP processor-based server was the best choice in terms of performance and stability," said Dr. Johannes Luginsland, manager IT infrastructure for safety and comfort simulation, DaimlerChrysler. "The AMD Athlon MP processor's extraordinary floating point capabilities coupled with AMD’s Smart MP technology deliver the superior performance we need for mission-critical supercomputing. Shortened product development processes made possible by gains in computer aided engineering require increasingly demanding simulations that must be carried out in less time. This demands the appropriate computer processing capability."
Electronic Arts, a leader in PC and console games, and the number one game site on the Internet, recommended AMD Athlon XP and AMD Athlon MP processor-based desktop and workstation computers for its worldwide studios. "The performance, compatibility, and reliability of the AMD Athlon MP processor has led us to select it as part of the workstation development solution worldwide for Electronic Arts to help speed game design processes," said Scott Cronce, VP and chief technology officer, Electronic Arts Inc. "Additionally, the stability we have had with AMD Athlon XP processor-based desktop machines has given us reason to populate them in other departments in Electronic Arts."
John Zatopek, senior engineering specialist at Siemens Dematic Postal Automation L.P., expressed his views about his company's decision to deploy AMD Athlon MP systems for the automation sorting machines of the US Postal Service: "There's often someone who might question why a company would switch to a different component supplier," said Zatopek. "Someone who's ready to point the finger or second-guess your decision. But it all comes down to performance. If it tests well, that's it. We saw the price/performance ratio we were looking for with AMD Athlon MP processors. In business, you have to go with the numbers."
AnandTech, the well-known hardware website, has expressed its preferred choice by moving from Intel to AMD for its mission critical servers. All of their web servers are now running on the AMD Athlon MP platform. It will also be migrating its database servers to AMD's Athlon technology as well. So as far as AnandTech is concerned, AMD's server technology has earned its mission critical colors.
Let's not forget the notebook world, which is one of the few markets that has shown significant growth during the worst ever semiconductor downturn. As well as the Compaq notebooks that were detailed earlier, Fujitsu North America also launched its LifeBook A Series business class notebooks last April. Unfortunately, after less than six months, this product has been discontinued. Hopefully, this indicates a soon to be announced replacement, which offers improved DDR memory and ATI graphics like the AMILO A Series that is available in Europe.
Last August, Sony launched its VAIO NVR23 multimedia notebook. This sports the strength and speed of an executive class notebook with mighty multimedia capabilities. AMD's mobile Athlon XP1800+ puts pedal to the metal, the large 15" XGA screen gives a full panoramic view, Nvidia's powerhouse GeForce4 420 Go graphics processor with 32 MB of on-chip dedicated DDR memory brings the digital world to life, and a superlative subwoofer module adds the essential low frequency sound that's all too lacking on so many notebooks. With the other top notch components that you'd expect to see on a system like this, it is little wonder that this must be the best specced AMD notebook to be brought to market thus far. At under $1,500, it's also tremendous value as well. Others are sure to follow. µ
Part 3, to be published Friday, will consider the following:
Is AMD now ready to impact the enterprise space?
What will it take for AMD to reach critical mass?
The choice IT buyers have to make
Going the extra mile
Fulfilling the AMD dream
Stay tuned...
You can find the First Part of this extended analytical opinion piece here.
Cyrix was taken over by National Semiconductor, later National Semiconductor sold the Cyrix brand and some patents to VIA.
The Cyrix designs live on in the National Semiconductor Geode, The (real) Cyrix III was an absolute failure, at 400mhz it was slower than a 233mhz Pentium, VIA would throw away the Cyrix III and rebrand the IDT Centaur C5A the Cyrix III, however as a result of Cyrix's reputation and massive complaining from the guys at Centaur in Austin VIA rebranded the Cyrix III as the VIA C3.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.