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AMD talks more about Torrenza
By agencies
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Monday, 25 September 2006, 19:30 IST
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has released further details on its Torrenza Initiative. Torrenza is a customer-centric x86 platform that would enable OEMs to develop and deploy application-specific co-processors working alongside AMD processors.
According to AMD, its Torrenza Initiative is serving as a collaborative force toward achieving future processor socket compatibility in the server industry. By leveraging the advantages of AMD64 with Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport technology, OEMs will be able to standardize on a Torrenza Innovation Socket for many of their current and future server platforms.
This new approach to server design will enable OEMs to consolidate server offerings for multiple processors to potentially a single platform, reducing datacenter disruption and deployment costs for customers. The Torrenza initiative is establishing AMD64 as the Open Innovation Platform.
Further, the company said that leading server OEMs developing silicon or intending to design products uniquely enabled by the Torrenza Initiative, including Cray, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP, IBM, Dell, and Sun Microsystems, have endorsed Torrenza as an open innovation initiative and plan to evaluate the Torrenza Innovation Socket.
The Torrenza Innovation Socket enables OEMs developing their own silicon to take full advantage of an x86 environment and the accompanying economics associated with packaging, chipsets, and motherboard designs. They can also contribute to and obtain the specifications and design documentation.
Commenting on this technology, Dwight Barron, HP Fellow and chief technologist - BladeSystem Division, HP, said "When combined with HP BladeSystem Solutions Builder Program, the AMD Torrenza initiative becomes a very effective way to deliver high-value computing services to specialized market segments. The industry has been looking for a way to leverage industry-standard, high-volume IT components to solve the next tier of specialized computing problems, and HP sees this as a way to address that need."
According to Joseph Reger, CTO, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the company sees the value in Torrenza initiative and has therefore already developed technology for it. They are able to connect two 2-socket servers seamlessly, turning them into a 4-way or 8-core SMP as a result of Torrenza. This upgradeability of systems improves server longevity, and reduces total cost of ownership.
AMD believes that through the Torrenza Initiative, the AMD64 computing platform is opened for industry-wide innovation, such as connecting non-AMD accelerators to AMD64 systems via HyperTransport technology links. It supports a range of integration innovations from interconnections leveraging HyperTransport, to co-processors accessing HyperTransport, to plug-in co-processors that directly harness the speed and communications delivered by HyperTransport.