AMDs Operating System Research Center in Dresden Celebrates First Year Anniversary

One year after opening, AMD’s Dresden-based Operating System Research Center (OSRC) has become a successful member of the worldwide AMD research and development (R&D) network, and currently employees more than 20 engineers and support staff.

By acting as the bridge between the operating system (OS) development community and the worldwide AMD processor design community, the OSRC plays an increasing role in ensuring next-generation AMD products and solutions enable the most advanced OS and application features.

The research center specializes in OS virtualization, memory management, multi-core scheduling and performance measuring to make better use of future multi-core architectures. One of the first opportunities for the Dresden team has been the optimization of operating systems for the upcoming quad-core AMD Opteron™ Processor ‘Barcelona’.

“Barcelona will enhance virtualization performance with a technology called Nested Paging,” said Chris Schlaeger, director of Operating System Research Center at AMD. “Nested Paging moves the process of virtual to physical address translation from software directly into the hardware. Virtualization software, which enables the simultaneous use of multiple operating systems on a single server or client, will get substantial performance acceleration as a result.”

Along with virtualization, software-enabled energy efficiency continues to be a top priority for AMD. Barcelona brings new, highly-advanced capabilities enabled by the latest generation of AMD PowerNow!™. Because AMD PowerNow! is a combination of both hardware and software technologies, key innovations are being co-developed by the OSRC.

With AMD PowerNow! and Barcelona, OSs will -- for the first time -- be able to throttle the performance of each core within the processor individually, allowing the system to use only the amount of energy necessary for the specific workload. This is expected to dramatically reduce the average power requirements of each Barcelona-powered system, allowing data center managers to reduce their facility’s total energy requirements and cooling costs, even as they increase rack server density.

While the OSRC is officially based in Dresden, it relies upon a distributed global staffing structure to achieve greater success. In addition to the core team based in Dresden, OSRC employees are located in various locations worldwide, including the USA. Further, AMD currently has plans to hire additional specialists in other key regions. This structure allows AMD to more effectively and rapidly serve the needs of customers and partners, by placing the right engineering resources within closer proximity.

“The OSRC has been located in Dresden due to the excellent universities, research centers, and world-class workforce in Saxony, but we are consistently looking for new talent all over Europe and worldwide,” said Earl Stahl, vice president of software development at AMD. “Our goal is to find the best software engineers with a great passion for hardware tuning, or the strongest electrical engineers with a love for software development. Our organization is where hardware and software comes together to form the ultimate end-solution.”

About AMD Dresden
AMD has been one of the largest international investors in Germany during the previous decade. Total investment in the Dresden site, including Fab 30, Fab 36, and the Dresden Design Center, was approximately $ 5 billion by the end of 2006.

In its semiconductor facilities Fab 30 and Fab 36, AMD manufactures its successful processor families for desktop and mobile applications, servers and workstations: AMD Opteron™, AMD Athlon™64, AMD Turion™64 and AMD Sempron™.

AMDs newest fabrication facility will come online through a major transformation of the company’s existing Fab 30, which will be named Fab 38. The transition from 200 mm to 300 mm wafers allows for more than twice as many processors on a wafer.

At present, AMD employs approximately 3,000 highly qualified engineers, technicians and specialists in Fab 30, Fab 36, Operating System Research Center, and the Dresden Design Center which is currently helping create AMD’s next-generation “Fusion” Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) and ultra-low power embedded processors. The Dresden Engineering Laboratory focuses on the design, testing and qualification of next-generation AMD platforms, as well as the support of key European customers.

About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative processing solutions in the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets. AMD is dedicated to driving open innovation, choice and industry growth by delivering superior customer-centric solutions that empower consumers and businesses worldwide. For more information, visit www.amd.com.