The AMD Opteron (codenamed SledgeHammer during development) was the first of AMD's eighth-generation x86 processors based on the K8 or Hammer core, and the first processor to implement the AMD64 (formerly x86-64) instruction set architecture. It was released on April 22, 2003 and was intended to compete in the server market, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor.
Opteron combines two important capabilities in a single processor die:
1. native execution of legacy x86 32-bit applications without speed penalties
2. native execution of x86-64 64-bit applications (linear-addressing beyond 4 GB RAM)
The first capability is notable because at the time of Opteron's introduction, the only other 64-bit processor architecture marketed with 32-bit x86 compatibility (Intel's Itanium) ran x86 legacy-applications only with significant speed degradation. The second capability, by itself, is less noteworthy, as all major RISC players (Sun SPARC, DEC Alpha, HP PA-RISC, IBM POWER, SGI MIPS, etc.) have had 64-bit implementations for many years. In combining these two capabilities, however, the Opteron has earned recognition for its ability to run the vast installed base of x86 applications economically, while simultaneously offering an upgrade-path to 64-bit computing.
The Opteron processor possesses an integrated DDR SDRAM / DDR2 SDRAM(Socket F) memory controller. This both reduces the latency penalty for accessing the main RAM and eliminates the need for a separate northbridge chip. Wikipedia
Supercomputers
On the Nov 2006 TOP500 list, 22.6% of the worlds fastest known 500 supercomputer installations were AMD64 Opteron-based systems, while 21.6% were Intel EM64T/Intel 64 Xeon-based. Supercomputers based on Opteron mentioned in the top 10 fastest supercomputers in the world:
* #2: Sandia National Laboratories. Machine: Cray Red Storm XT3. CPU: 26,544 Dual-Core Opteron (2.4 GHz). Rpeak: 101.4 TeraFlops.
* #9: TSUBAME Grid Cluster, GSIC Center, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Machine: Sun Fire X4600 Cluster. CPU: 10,368 Opteron (2.4/2.6 GHz). Connection: Infiniband. Main Memory: 21248 GB, Rpeak: 47.38 TeraFlops.
* #10: Jaguar - Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Cray XT3, 2.6 GHz 10,424 Dual Core Opteron.
