AMD's Opteron X-series targets Intel Atom for the microserver CPU market

AMD might not be able to keep up (down?) with Intel in the CPU power consumption race, so it's taking another tack with the new Opteron X-series: horsepower. It just announced the Opteron X1150 and X2150 64-bit processors for microservers, part of the Jaguar-codenamed family of CPUs arriving in the next-gen Xbox One and Sony PS4 consoles. Thanks to its ultra-low power 6-watt Atom S1200 chips, Intel excels in the low-power server market, and at 9W and 11W respectively (minimum), AMD's CPUs consume considerably more juice. But AMD is pitching them as a better solution overall, thanks to those four cores (compared to two in the Atom), integrated AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics on the X2150 model, support for 32GB of RAM and integrated SATA ports. AMD's chips are pricier, though, at $64 (X1150) or $99 (X2150) compared to $54 for Intel's Atom S1200 (all in quantities of 1,000). To top it off, Intel has new 64-bit Atom SoCs coming soon promising even lower power consumption -- possibly leaving AMD to play catch-up again.

Filed under: Peripherals, Networking, AMD

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