I'm curious about what people here think the expected lifespan of the Athlon MP will be. Some of my estimates are based off the AMD Roadmap linked from their main page - admittedly, nearly 5 months old. However, I've made a few observations from it with respect to the Athlon MP:
Firstly, the arrow shows availability through the rest of this year, with available for the first half of next year "As Market Requires." Comparing this to the 180nm Duron, which shows "As Market Requires" availability even now, I'm led to believe that by March of next year, Athlon MP's will be about as easy to find as Duron 1.3's and below are today - in other words, quite difficult. However, the Athlon MP market seems quite different from that of the Duron - while the Duron was replaced by faster, almost as inexpensive Athlon XP 1600+'s and the like (1800+ seems to be the bottom XP commonly available now), the Athlon MP's replacement, the Opteron, is still quite a bit more expensive, and the base (240) model probably doesn't meet the performance of the high-end MP model (2800+).
Judging from the prices, to build a 1U dual processor server - which is what I'm primarily concerned with - currently involves a motherboard that costs about $75-150 more ($75 for IDE, $100-150 for boards with SCSI), and two bottom-of-the-line 240 Opteron processors which cost slightly more (say $50 difference for 2) than top-of-the-line Athlon MP 2800+'s.
So, my question is two-fold - what is the expected performance level of Opteron 240's vs. Athlon MP 2800+s? They'd be running Linux, and the Opteron system would be compiled with 64-bit support. Typically usage is for combined web (Apache) + database (MySQL) + mail (qmail with SpamAssassin and clamav) servers, though in some cases (with larger clients) the functionality is split among 2 or more servers. So, what dual Opteron system is comparable to a dual MP 2800+ system, and at what price difference? Would it require Dual 242 or even 244 processors? That drives up the price quite a bit.
Given that, what does AMD plan to do with the MP line? I'm aware that the 2800+ is the highest they plan to make, but given that MP's currently seem to offer a much better price/performance ratio (the 2400+ or 2600+ seems like the sweet spot), will AMD kill off this line? There is no question that it is hurting their Opteron line, so I wonder - and I ask people here - how long until AMD decides to pull the plug on the MP?
Firstly, the arrow shows availability through the rest of this year, with available for the first half of next year "As Market Requires." Comparing this to the 180nm Duron, which shows "As Market Requires" availability even now, I'm led to believe that by March of next year, Athlon MP's will be about as easy to find as Duron 1.3's and below are today - in other words, quite difficult. However, the Athlon MP market seems quite different from that of the Duron - while the Duron was replaced by faster, almost as inexpensive Athlon XP 1600+'s and the like (1800+ seems to be the bottom XP commonly available now), the Athlon MP's replacement, the Opteron, is still quite a bit more expensive, and the base (240) model probably doesn't meet the performance of the high-end MP model (2800+).
Judging from the prices, to build a 1U dual processor server - which is what I'm primarily concerned with - currently involves a motherboard that costs about $75-150 more ($75 for IDE, $100-150 for boards with SCSI), and two bottom-of-the-line 240 Opteron processors which cost slightly more (say $50 difference for 2) than top-of-the-line Athlon MP 2800+'s.
So, my question is two-fold - what is the expected performance level of Opteron 240's vs. Athlon MP 2800+s? They'd be running Linux, and the Opteron system would be compiled with 64-bit support. Typically usage is for combined web (Apache) + database (MySQL) + mail (qmail with SpamAssassin and clamav) servers, though in some cases (with larger clients) the functionality is split among 2 or more servers. So, what dual Opteron system is comparable to a dual MP 2800+ system, and at what price difference? Would it require Dual 242 or even 244 processors? That drives up the price quite a bit.
Given that, what does AMD plan to do with the MP line? I'm aware that the 2800+ is the highest they plan to make, but given that MP's currently seem to offer a much better price/performance ratio (the 2400+ or 2600+ seems like the sweet spot), will AMD kill off this line? There is no question that it is hurting their Opteron line, so I wonder - and I ask people here - how long until AMD decides to pull the plug on the MP?
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