AMD Opteron™ Processor Helping Deliver High Performance Storage Systems

Number of leading storage systems based on AMD Direct Connect Architecture continues to rise—

SUNNYVALE, CA.--AMD (NYSE: AMD) announced today that it continues to see strong demand among its commercial storage customers. There are currently more than 20 commercial storage systems available on the market today that rely on AMD’s Direct Connect Architecture, including the recently announced Sun Microsystems StorageTek™ 5800 “Honeycomb” system.

These varied platforms are available from industry-leading tier one storage system vendors including Sun, NetApp and HP, as well as emerging storage specialists including agámi Systems and Capricorn Technology. Many of these customers take advantage of the AMD Longevity Program which offers the long-term processor supply frequently required in storage system design.

“Storage plays a critical role in the datacenter,” said Pat Patla, director, Server and Workstation division at AMD. “The same benefits that the AMD Opteron™ processor brings to a high-end 4P enterprise server or a single socket pedestal system are critical to the storage environment – extreme reliability, high performance, and energy efficiency. The storage market is also recognizing the data center’s move toward virtualization benefits and AMD technology is helping deliver that efficiency and cost savings to end customers.”

With the unique features of Direct Connect Architecture and HyperTransport™ technology, AMD gives storage vendors an opportunity to deliver extreme data throughput, which is a key performance differentiator in this market. NetApp, a leading enterprise storage vendor, has published standard benchmark numbers that show a 100% performance increase with their flagship AMD Opteron processor-based system over its previous incarnation. Because of this tangible performance advantage, the selection of AMD technology in storage system design is now playing a differentiating role in the market.

“NetApp features a number of premier products that incorporate the unique features of AMD Opteron processors,” said Patrick Rogers, VP of Solutions Marketing, at NetApp. “Our customers experience a dramatic performance advantage with AMD technology and NetApp’s range of specialized storage systems and software. A primary strategy for NetApp is the ability to offer Fibre Channel and IP (iSCSI and NFS) SANs on a unified storage platform. This strategy and our leading-edge virtualization offerings are enhanced by the scalability and technological advantages of the AMD Opteron processor and HyperTransport technology.”

“Many of Sun’s storage servers are powered by AMD Opteron processors - including the Sun Fire X4500 and the new Sun StorageTek 5800 - and have already started to change the way customers store and retrieve data on a large scale,” said Graham Lovell, senior director of storage servers & IPTV marketing at Sun Microsystems. ”The wholly unique management and metadata search capability in the StorageTek 5800 leverages the high-performance, low energy consuming AMD Opteron processor and enables our enterprise and public sector customers to save time and money in storing, archiving and retrieving increasingly larger and more complex data"

“With the advent of 64-bit processing technology from AMD, agámi Systems has developed a new style of architecture for NAS file systems that eliminates traditional bottlenecks. agámi Information Servers are based on an industry-first four-way AMD Opteron processor design, with HyperTransport technology data links, to provide over 1GB/sec of sustained throughput for file data and over 900Mb/sec of throughput for block data,” says David Stiles, President & CEO, agámi Systems, Inc. “By blending the core design of our storage system with AMD’s processor technology our customers are able to experience next generation storage technology that delivers new levels of performance with enterprise-level functionality and a low TCO.”