Power Management 

Power Efficiency

AMD Powers Efficient Datacenters: Comparing Power Consumption

When server efficiency matters, it's not enough to compare spec sheets. AMD delivers power efficiency at three real-world workloads.

 

 

 

Industry-Leading Performance-per-Watt

Six-Core AMD Opteron™ processors can deliver a significant performance increase over Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors while operating within the exact same power and thermal envelopes, offering IT organizations ground-breaking performance-per-watt without increased data center energy consumption or the associated power and cooling costs.

Both Six-Core and Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors offer outstanding energy efficiency through the AMD-P suite of power management features:

AMD-P Technologies
  • Enhanced AMD PowerNow!™ Technology  with Independent Dynamic Core Technology allows each core to vary its frequency, based on the specific needs of the application. This allows for more precise power management to reduce data center energy consumption and thereby reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
  • Dual Dynamic Power Management™ allows each processor to maximize the power-saving benefits of Enhanced AMD PowerNow! technology without compromising performance. Dual Dynamic Power Management can reduce idle power consumption and allow for per-processor power management in multi-socket systems to decrease power consumption.
  • AMD CoolCore™ Technology evaluates which parts of the die - the cores, the memory, or both - are needed to support currently running applications. It can cut power to unused transistor areas to reduce power consumption and lower heat generation.
  • AMD PowerCap Manager gives an IT manager the ability to put a cap on the P-state level of the cores via the BIOS.  This can help reduce processor power consumption of a system.
  • AMD Smart Fetch Technology enables inactive cores to write contents of their L1 and L2 caches to the shared L3 cache.  This can allow the inactive cores to enter a "halt" state and draw less power, reducing CPU power consumption.

 

Integrated DDR2 DRAM Memory Controller: Low-Power Memory To Reduce Power Consumption

AMD's Integrated Memory Controller works exclusively with high bandwidth, energy-efficient DDR2 memory. It incorporates Memory RAS for increased fault tolerance to reduce system downtime and increase system reliability.

DDR2 memory can improve overall TCO by reducing memory power consumption almost 8 watts per DIMM compared to Fully Buffered DIMM memory technology.

A More Relevant Way to Measure Processor Power
Average CPU Power (ACP)

Customers prefer a more accurate way to account for processor power rather than engineering Thermal Design Power (TDP).  Over-estimating power budgets by leveraging engineering design limits can lead to wasted data center space and inefficiencies.  So AMD has defined a new metric offering users a more useful way to evaluate typical processor power consumption.  ACP values are determined by measuring processor power consumption including power for the cores, memory controller and HyperTransport™ Technology links while running accurate and relevant commercially useful high utilization workloads.
For more information read the Average CPU Power white paper (PDF).

Resources
AMD delivers power efficiency at three real-world workloads.
Supporting white papers
Published by the IEEE Computer Society
Published by IBM Systems and Technology Group
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES: The energy cost calculation is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind.