Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveiled an energy-efficient server platform aimed at Big Data and cloud computing. The SM15000 server is the first major fruit of its acquisition of SeaMicro this year and supports both AMD and Intel processors. AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server features the 'Freedom Fabric Storage,' which extends its Freedom Fabric beyond the SeaMicro chassis to connect directly to massive disk arrays, enabling a single ten rack unit system to support more than five petabytes of low-cost storage.

The new technology has more bandwidth while using less electricity than previous products, Andrew Feldman, formerly CEO of SeaMicro and now at AMD, told reporters at an event.

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 system is available today and currently supports the Intel Xeon Processor E3-1260L ("Sandy Bridge"). In November, it will support the next generation of AMD Opteron processors featuring the "Piledriver" core, as well as the newly announced Intel Xeon Processor E3-1265Lv2 ("Ivy Bridge").

"Historically, server architecture has focused on the processor, while storage and networking were afterthoughts. But increasingly, cloud and big data customers have sought a solution in which storage, networking and compute are in balance and are shared. In a legacy server, storage is a captive resource for an individual processor, limiting the ability of disks to be shared across multiple processors, causing massive data replication and necessitating the purchase of expensive storage area networking or network attached storage equipment," said Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager of the Data Center Server Solutions group at AMD. "AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server enables companies, for the first time, to share massive amounts of storage across hundreds of efficient computing nodes in an exceptionally dense form factor. We believe that this will transform the data center compute and storage landscape."

AMD's SeaMicro products combine compute, storage and fabric-based networking in a single chassis. Combining the Freedom Supercompute Fabric technology with the Freedom Fabric Storage technology enables data centers to provide more than five petabytes of storage with 64 servers in a single ten rack unit (17.5 inch tall) SM15000 system. Once these disks are interconnected with the fabric, they are seen and shared by all servers in the system.

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server is built around the second-generation fabric -- the Freedom Fabric. It is the only fabric technology designed and optimized to work with Central Processor Units (CPUs) that have both large and small cores, as well as x86 and non-x86 CPUs. Freedom Fabric contains technology including:

- SeaMicro IOVT (Input/Output Virtualization Technology), which eliminates all but three components from the SeaMicro motherboard -- CPU, DRAM, and the ASIC itself -- thereby shrinking the motherboard, while reducing power, cost and space;

- SeaMicro TIO (Turn It Off) technology, which enables further power optimization on the mini motherboard by turning off unneeded CPU and chipset functions;

- Freedom Supercompute Fabric creates a 1.28 terabits-per-second fabric that ties together 64 of the power-optimized mini-motherboards at low latency and low power with massive bandwidth;

- SeaMicro Freedom Fabric Storage, which allows the Freedom Supercompute Fabric to extend out of the chassis and across the data center, linking not just components inside the chassis, but those outside as well.

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server will be available with 64 compute cards, each holding a new custom-designed single-socket octal core 2.0/2.3/2.8 GHz AMD Opteron processor based on the "Piledriver" core, for a total of 512 cores per system or 2,048 cores per rack. Each AMD Opteron processor can support 64 gigabytes of DRAM, enabling a single system to handle more than four terabytes of DRAM and over 16 terabytes of DRAM per rack. AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 system will also be available with a quad core 2.5 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E3-1265Lv2 ("Ivy Bridge") for 256 2.5 GHz cores in a ten rack unit system or 1,024 cores in a standard rack. Each processor supports up to 32 gigabytes of memory so a single SeaMicro SM15000 system can deliver up to two terabytes of DRAM and up to eight terabytes of DRAM per rack.

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server also contains 16 fabric extender slots, each of which can connect to three different Freedom Fabric Storage arrays with different capacities:

- FS 5084-L is an ultra-dense capacity-optimized storage system. It supports up to 84 SAS/SATA 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch drives in 5 rack units for up to 336 terabytes of capacity per-array and over five petabytes per SeaMicro SM15000 system;
- FS 2012-L is a capacity-optimized storage system. It supports up to 12 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch drives in 2 rack units for up to 48 terabytes of capacity per-array or up to 768 terabytes of capacity per SeaMicro SM15000 system;
- FS 2024-S is a performance-optimized storage system. It supports up to 24 2.5 inch drives in 2 rack units for up to 24 terabytes of capacity per-array or up to 384 terabytes of capacity per SM15000 system.

In summary, AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 system:

- Stands ten rack units or 17.5 inches tall;
- Contains 64 slots for compute cards for AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processors;
- Provides up to ten gigabits per-second of bandwidth to each CPU;
- Connects up to 1,408 solid state or hard drives with Freedom Fabric StorageDelivers up to 16 10 GbE uplinks or up to 64 1GbE uplinks;
- Runs standard off-the-shelf operating systems including Windows, Linux, Red Hat and VMware and Citrix XenServer hypervisors.

AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server with Intel's Xeon Processor E3-1260L "Sandy Bridge" is now generally available in the U.S. and in select international regions. Configurations based on AMD Opteron processors and Intel Xeon Processor E3-1265Lv2 with the "Ivy Bridge" microarchitecture will be available in November 2012.

AMD plans to market its chip technology along with SeaMicro's platforms to its corporate partners - Hewlett Packard, Dell and IBM.