AMD Opteron is a family of server-class processors based on K8
architecture. Opteron family was introduced in April 22, 2003, before
any other processors in AMD K8 family. All Opteron processors
released at that time were socket 940 only and required motherboards
with expensive registered RAM. The Opterons had single-channel DDR
memory controller and three HyperTransport links. The processors also
included AMD 64-bit technology, supported SSE and SSE2 instructions,
and had large 1MB level 2 cache. First Opteron processors were
manufactured using 0.13 micron technology - same technology was used
for the latest K7 processors. Though the Opterons were running at
lower frequencies than Athlon XP processors, their Thermal Design
Power (TDP) was higher. TDP was slightly lowered with the
introduction of 0.09 micron Opteron CPUs in 2005. These processors
added support for SSE3 instructions and increased maximum frequency
of HyperTransports links from 800 MHz to 1 GHz. Some uni-processor
Opterons were also manufactured for socket 939. These microprocessors
were essentially fast Athlon 64
processors - they could work with less expensive unbuffered RAM
and had only one Hypertransport link.
All Opteron processors were manufactured in three different versions:
- Processors for uni-processor systems
- Processors for dual-processor systems
- Processors for systems supporting up to 8 processors
To distinguish between different Opteron versions AMD used
Opteron model numbers.
Each Opteron processor had three-digit model number. The first digit
(1, 2 or 8) specifies processor scalability, i.e. how many processors
can be used in one system. A number, formed from the second and third
digits, is used to specify relative processor performance. This number
is greater for faster Opteron processors, and it can be used to
compare processors with different scalability. For example, Opteron
840 is slower than Opteron 142 when used in a single-processor system.
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