In an earlier post related to targeted CPU power I talked about the emerging power of the x86 platform and its ability to handle even the most demanding workloads in a fully virtualized environment.
Recently, AMD announced that its long awaited 16-core (real cores - no hyper-threading) chip, codenamed "Interlagos" is finally available as the Opteron 6200. This is significant for the industry, not just in the speeds and feeds area, but also in really stepping up to the table in dealing with enterprise virtualization and Cloud needs in particular.
The ability to continuously add computing power within ever tighter thermal envelopes using the same processor socket, and wrap that in enough intelligence for dealing with service provider issues such as energy management is critical. This certainly follows the idea of upgrading that underlying hardware for a doubling in capability.
The fact that the major virtualization players already support AMD Opteron 6200 out of the box is great. This allows that forward planning exercise to be done when planning the computing base for your cloud.
For new entrants, those that held out on full blown cloud infrastructures, this very capable compute platform provides a means of entering rapidly and with power. The increasing core count is providing a market mechanism of reducing barriers to entry - hence potentially more competitors and potentially more choice!......
Read entire blog at Why Cores STILL Matter - Continuous Workload Consolidation
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About jaspal.dhalliwal
A senior consultant in the IT industry for over two decades. Having worked in fields as diverse as large scale infrastructure architecture & design to IT Strategy formulation provides me with a deep insight into the evolving role of IT and its relationship to the business.
Passionate about virualization and its effect on how business strategy is formulated and enhanced.
Currently at the EMC Consulting Cloud & Virtual Datacenter practice, focusing on transforming organisational IT by bringing the Cloud business value proposition to bear upon the challenges of IT being a business partner and enabler.