Crazy computing comes with RAW power, AMD is giving it to us. on AMD's official blog John Fruehe(Director of Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products at AMD). Mentioned and gave his views about the new AMD's Opteron Processor, codename "Magny-Cours"

The Blog entry said the following

Every December we see the same year-end wrap ups: the top ten lists, the trends to watch, the lists of things that we should be thankful for, the predictions for the next year.

I like to be different, so let me just declare 2010 “The Year of the AMD Opteron™ Processor.” Perhaps that is the power of having a blog – I can unilaterally declare things, and then, with the exception of user comments, stand alone to be judged on my accuracy by time.

In my opinion this one is the sure thing. So let me throw in my mixture of those lists I mentioned above to prove that 2010 will be our year.

The Top Ten: Instead of a top ten list, let me give you a top twelve list instead.  And let me make it really easy – every item is the same.  It’s a core.  Yes, 2010 will be the year of the core.  It looks like nobody will have more x86 cores in a single server processor than AMD, so if you are running highly threaded applications, we’re your best bet. When I think back to the B.O. times (before Opteron), the single core processor was the best you could hope for. We changed all that.

Now, as we look out into the first quarter of 2010 we’re scheduled to release 12 cores per socket with our “Magny-Cours” processors.  Customers running virtualization will love these processors.  Instead of the 8-10 virtual machines on a virtualized 2P server being set up as single core servers or having to share cores, they can now be set up as 2P virtual machines knowing that they will not be “sharing” their processor cycles with the other VMs. A big pool of resources helps ensure better load handling for multiple VMs on a single server.

Earlier this month I was at an IT conference and in the virtualization session, close to 75% of the customers confirmed that they were using virtualization somewhere in their environment.  Ok – it’s a small sample size and anecdotal – but still, talk about an industry prediction taking hold.

The Trend to Watch: Cloud Computing.  I just upped my hit rate on this blog by including the hottest buzzword in IT.  In 2008/2009 clouds were all the rage, but the recent economic events pushed people harder than ever towards evaluating cloud technologies.  I have met very few customers that aren’t in the investigation or evaluation stage right now.  This bodes well for our upcoming “Lisbon”  processors scheduled to launch in Q2. Designed for highly dense could environments, these new processors will feature a 35W power band.  With 6 cores at 35W, you are looking at less than 6W per core. When you consider that cloud environments will grow quickly and demand high density, as well as low power to remain affordable, these products are perfectly matched to cloud environments.

Things to be Thankful for: The Economy. No, seriously.  This past year has not been easy on companies, countries, or citizens..  But we have learned a lot from it. Unfortunately, in the past 18 months people bought fewer servers, all of the market data bears that out.  But in spending less on hardware, smart IT directors were able to save some of the headcount – and this is critical as businesses begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  In that IT conference I spoke to a lot of people who are starting to think more carefully about value in the data center.  Between getting smart about their purchases and taking a hard line look at value, more people are in a position to see beyond all the hype and take a look at what value they are truly getting out of their computing assets. And when it comes to value, we are the king. As budgets free up, people won’t forget the lessons that they learned in the downturn.  This plays to our strengths.

Another area to be thankful: Execution.  We have been exceeding customer expectations with our recent product introductions and I thankfully see no reason to believe that 2010 won’t see this trend continue.