Opteron 8-way server announced

[hitssquad]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040405044711.html X-bit labs that at least one system integrator would unleash a server powered by 8 AMD Opteron processors this week. So far server makers have only released 2-way or 4-way systems based on AMD64 chips, while 8-way designs were expected for introduction at a later date.

 

[Quantum Foam]

Mmmm..mmmm mmmm... 8 way goodness. Now I can start pumping more data.

 

[hitssquad]

Iwill announces its own 8P Opteron motherboards

From The Inquirer:

• TAIWANESE SERVER firm Iwill said it has introduced what it claims are the first modular 4P and 8P Opteron mobos using HTX-Pro, which is a Hypertransport expansion capability.
  
  The boards are the QK8S and the QK8S-8P...
  
  the QK8S, for example, uses three separate boards to form an eight way system...
  
  The 8P uses five separate boards to make an eight way system.

And the QK8S-8P can hold up to 256GB of RAM. The hard drive in my laptop I am using right now only holds 20GB.

 

[graphic7]

And the QK8S-8P can hold up to 256GB of RAM. The hard drive in my laptop I am using right now only holds 20GB.

Your hard drive has nothing to do with RAM. Understand that 256GB of ram is actually RAM, not hard drive space.

 

[hitssquad]

Iwill 8P Opteron system correction

From The Inquirer:

• TAIWANESE SERVER firm Iwill said it has introduced what it claims are the first modular 4P and 8P Opteron mobos using HTX-Pro, which is a Hypertransport expansion capability.
  
  The boards are the QK8S and the QK8S-8P...
  
  the QK8S, for example, uses three separate boards to form an eight way system...
  
  The 8P uses five separate boards to make an eight way system.

This is incorrect. The correct figures are: 4-way for the QK8S, and 8-way for the QK8S-8P (and hence the addition of 8P to the name). http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=96397 is a link to Iwill's detailed press release which gives much more information than the Inquirer write up:

• The Iwill QK8S consists of three (3) separate boards to form a complete 4-Way AMD Opteron processor solution...
  
  The Iwill QK8S-8P consists of five (5) separate boards that form a complete 8-Way AMD Opteron processor solution. By adding a second Iwill QK8S CPU board via our HTX-Pro(TM) interconnect backplane with the first QK8S (3 board set) creates this 8P board set.
  
  The CPU Board is the core of the QK8S design. It supports four (4) AMD Opteron 800 Series Processors with sixteen (16) DDR SDRAM slots to support up to 64GB of Registered DDR400/DDR333 memory using 4GB modules or 128GB of Registered DDR266 memory using 8GB modules.

And the QK8S-8P can hold up to 256GB of RAM.

This is correct, but as stated above the reason is that the QK8S-8P consists partly of two QK8S CPU Boards and each board can be populated with a maximum 128GB of RAM.