AMD advances 64-bit power

Advanced Micro Devices’ efforts to spur the adoption of 64-bit computing received a boost at Comdex in Las Vegas last week when Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard announced plans to ship AMD 64-bit systems. HP unveiled its Compaq Presario 8000Z, a high-performance desktop based on the Athlon 64 3200+ processor.

Meanwhile, Sun’s endorsement of AMD’s Opteron generated the most buzz. Opteron has until now only been available in one system, IBM’s eServer 325. Sun’s CEO Scott McNealy unveiled the two-processor and four-processor Opteron servers,  due to ship in the first quarter of 2004.

McNealy hopes the combination of Opteron’s commodity pricing and Solaris’ 64-bit features will give Sun an edge on Dell and HP, which have not announced support for Opteron. “Here’s a processor architecture that actually allows us to take advantage of all that Solaris has to offer,” he said.

But Linux and Solaris are only part of AMD’s 64-bit play. When Microsoft ships a production-ready version of Windows for AMD’s 64-bit systems at the end of 2004, the chip maker plans to have already delivered tens of millions of 64-bit processors to market.

By slashing prices on its 64-bit chips to 32-bit levels next year, the company expects to make 64-bit processors the default choice for AMD systems.

In fact, AMD will probably stop producing 32-bit chips by the end of 2005, said Marty Seyer, vice president and general manager of AMD’s microprocessor unit.

Although the Sun pact is important, AMD’s work on chip manufacturing processes with IBM is the partnership to watch, said Charles King, a research director The Sageza Group. “IBM sells over 30 million Power chips a year and they know how to make chips. Having IBM as a buddy is a very good thing for AMD,” he said.