====== 2010.02.26 - cormageddon ======

{{ :blog:2010:02:opteron_6k.jpg|Opteron 6000-series (picture taken from http://www.in4.pl/komentarze_8_i_12_rdzeni_-_Opterony_Magny-Cours_wchodz%C4%85_do_sprzeda%C5%BCy,20462.htm)}}
after doing some reading/writing about more cores in CPUs ([[blog:2009.12.04|here come the cores]], [[blog:2009.11.28|"free lunch is over"]]) we finally get it in our stores! AMD has officially released [[http://www.in4.pl/komentarze_8_i_12_rdzeni_-_Opterony_Magny-Cours_wchodz%C4%85_do_sprzeda%C5%BCy,20462.htm|Opteron 6000-series with from 8 to 12 cores]].

since few days i'm doing a little computing for private purposes any my 4 cores on the server are not enough here. the task is very well scaling between cores (nearly no communication needed) and so increasing from 4 to 12 cores would make work almost 3 times faster. add gigabit ethernet, with [[wp>channel bondling]] from 2 cards and we can easily compute on 2-3 such machines at home (36 cores at home would be quite impressive i must say!).

the problem is, as usually with new hardware -- the price. it's not totally unaffordable, though 500Euro for the cheapest model (8-cores) up to 1100Euro for the most expensive (12-cores) is a lot, but comparing with the prices of some other solutions one might look for (i.e. [[wp>Nvidia Tesla]]) it's really not that bad. probably in a short time intel will release similar CPUs as well and so hardware like this will become more common -- so cheaper.

for now - let us wait and see! :)