An Office of the CTO Guest Blog
By Richard A. Brunner, Chief Platform Architect, Office of the CTO
We have been working with AMD for several years to ensure "Day 0" support of the upcoming AMD Opteron 6200, formerly known as the AMD "Interlagos" processor. As I have mentioned on VMware's CTO blog earlier this year, VMware takes "Day 0" support very seriously. When possible we include support in our products even before the processor actually launches.
So you'll notice that both VMware vSphere 5.0 and vSphere 4.1 Update 2 can already leverage the instruction set additions and full scalability of the AMD 16-core "Interlagos" processor. (And as an added bonus, vSphere 5.0 also stops licensing by core count.) We also worked closely with AMD's server OEMs to successfully qualify and certify their AMD "Interlagos" servers by launch time. These servers are already starting to list on VMware's Hardware Compatibility Guide.
Our preparation for this month's launch goes all the way back to mid-2010 when we introduced the "AMD Opteron Generation 3 w/o 3Dnow!" Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) mode in VMware vSphere 4.1. This mode allows older AMD processors to perform enhanced vmotion with the new AMD "Interlagos" processors and ensures seamless integration with existing customer infrastructure. We complemented this mode in vSphere 5.0 with the "AMD Opteron Generation 4" EVC mode that allows full use of the new instruction extensions.
Congratulations to AMD on this important processor launch!
Richard A. Brunner
Chief Platform Architect
CTO Office, VMware