Broad s/w ecosystem support for AMD's Shanghai

SUNNYVALE, USA: AMD announced ecosystem support by leading x86 operating system (OS) and virtualization partners for the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed “Shanghai.”

Built on 45nm process technology, the enhanced processor will offer innovations for AMD software partners like Microsoft, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VMware specifically designed to improve OS and virtualization performance. Strategic improvements in comparison to 65nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors include a larger L3 memory cache, and features designed to further optimize application performance in virtualized environments. The new AMD Opteron processor is uniquely architected to handle more memory-intensive applications while also enabling customers of all sizes to operate a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure.

“AMD is seeing rapid industry growth and demand for cutting edge technologies such as cloud computing and virtualization,” said Earl Stahl, vice president, Software Development, AMD. “As a result of our ongoing collaboration with software partners, AMD customers can soon easily upgrade to the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. Enterprise customers can leverage the ongoing enhanced performance and features like AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) technology that AMD continues to deliver, while protecting the investments made to their current software infrastructure.”

With more companies turning to virtualization to help improve data center efficiency and costs, AMD designed the new AMD Opteron processor to deliver a robust platform that can manage customers’ most demanding workloads, such as web hosting and complex database management, helping to maximize the business benefits of virtualization.

ISV ecosystem support

By collaborating with leading OS and virtual infrastructure vendors to help ensure applications are optimized for the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, AMD is providing customers with greater opportunity to utilize the software solutions that best meet the needs of their businesses.

“With the adoption of Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to address customers’ infrastructure virtualization needs, it’s exciting to see the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor coming to market to help improve the performance and scalability of virtualized environments and help provide power savings benefits for customers,” said Mike Schutz, director of product management, Windows Server virtualization at Microsoft. “We look forward to continuing to work closely with AMD to help customers utilize virtualization technologies and enable businesses of all sizes to make the most of their IT investments.”

“Red Hat is committed to bringing performance, reliability and security to our customers as they expand their use of open source virtualization throughout the enterprise,” said Brian Stevens, CTO at Red Hat. “As evidenced by our recent collaboration with AMD on live migration technology, Red Hat continues to deliver business value to customers via high-performance, standards-based virtualization solutions for heterogeneous environments.”

“Sun is committed to working with AMD to include optimization and tuning advancements in the Sun xVM virtualization software portfolio in order to meet the desktop and server virtualization requirements of our customers,” said Jim McHugh, vice president of marketing, Datacenter, Sun Microsystems. “Sun xVM Server, a datacenter-grade server virtualization solution, runs on 45 nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor-based systems and offers customers the ability to virtualize and manage heterogeneous workloads, including Windows, Linux and Solaris™ operating systems, as guests. Sun xVM Server is an easy-to-use, open source hypervisor that enables a simplified and secure environment for our customers.”

“The VMware platform helps AMD customers to minimize capital and operating costs, increase availability of mission-critical applications, and promote energy efficiencies,” said Shekar Ayyar, vice president of infrastructure alliances, VMware. “The advanced virtualization features in the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, such as AMD Extended Migration and AMD-V with Rapid Virtualization Indexing, can extend those benefits to optimize application performance in VMware virtualized environments.”

AMD also recognizes support for its forthcoming and current Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors from software and virtualization partners such as Parallels, Transitive and Virtual Iron.