Re: HP abandons Itanium2 in workstations

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2004 at 10:50:58AM -0500, Robert Citek wrote:
> What's the difference between the Opteron and the Athlong64?  Are they 
> not the same thing?

Almost.  The short answer is the Opteron is a server (and high-end
workstation) processor, and the Athlon64 is a consumer processor.  The
long answer is that the Opterons and Athlon64s use the same core
(64-bit, but with full 32-bit compatibility[*]).  The differences
between the Opterons and the various Athlon64s are the socket type
used (940-pin, 939-pin, or 754-pin), memory compatibility, and cache
size.  The various Opteron models are numbered based on their SMP
compatibility (1xx for 1-way, 2xx for 2-way, 8xx for 8-way).

Here's a little table that may or may not help:

   Model     #   Socket  Freq         Memory technology      Cache
  -------   ---  ------ -------  --------------------------- -----
  Opteron   850    940  2.4GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   848    940  2.2GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   846    940  2.0GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   844    940  1.8GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   842    940  1.6GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   840    940  1.4GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   2xx    940  1.4GHz+  Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Opteron   1xx    940  1.4GHz+  Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Athlon64  FX-51  940  2.0GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Athlon64  FX-53  940  2.4GHz   Dual-channel DDR (ECC Reg.)  1MB
  Athlon64  FX-53  939  2.4GHz   Dual-channel DDR             1MB
  Athlon64  3800+  939  2.4GHz   Dual-channel DDR            512KB
  Athlon64  3500+  939  2.2GHz   Dual-channel DDR            512KB
  Athlon64  3200+  939  2.0GHz   Dual-channel DDR            512KB
  Athlon64  3000+  939  1.8GHz   Dual-channel DDR            512KB
  Athlon64  3700+  754  2.4GHz   Single-channel DDR           1MB
  Athlon64  3400+  754  2.4GHz   Single-channel DDR          512KB
  Athlon64  3200+  754  2.0GHz   Single-channel DDR           1MB
  Athlon64  3000+  754  2.0GHz   Single-channel DDR          512KB
  Athlon64  2800+  754  1.8GHz   Single-channel DDR          512KB

(If it isn't obvious from the table, the Socket 940 Athlon64 FX-51 and
FX-54 are otherwise known as the Opteron 146 and Opteron 150,
respectively.)

Throw the Socket 754 Semprons in the mix, and I get really confused.  :-)

Oh, and some of that table came from here:

  http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_9485_9487^10248,00.html

[*] By "64-bit, but with full 32-bit compatibility", what I meant was
    that these processors all will run in either 32-bit mode (I have a
    customer running RH9/i386 on some Opterons), "mixed" 32/64-bit
    mode (64-bit kernel, 32-bit userspace), or full 64-bit mode
    (64-bit kernel, 64-bit userspace).  For reasons I won't go into
    right now, running 64-bit all the way is best, but 32-bit runs
    just fine (and quite quickly, faster than similarly clocked Athlon
    XPs).

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-3000             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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