Happy Sledgehammer Day! Opteron turns 6

Brian Ambrozy (primesuspect)

April 22, 2009 5:55 PM ET in Articles, ,

Hard to believe it was six years ago today that the AMD Opteron came out. I remember fondly how excited we were to get our first Opteron. AMD was going to seriously turn the tables on their competitor and really shake up the enthusiast world, and we were all on edge for it.

We owe a lot to the little 64-bit chip that could. Our community was extremely excited. Former Icrontic writer SimGuy was all over the web, trawling for news. There was, on the old Icrontic, a gigantic thread about the “Sledgehammer” that went on for page after page, compiling rumors, trading speculation, and being excited about the potential.

Try to remember the scene in 2003: 64 bit computing was a mythical beast on the horizon, for the most part in the “perpetually 5 years away” department. Even by early 2004, nobody really knew what to expect. We compiled a bunch of information on 64 bit to try to demystify it a bit, but people were just starting to get an idea of what could be done. Even though AMD had beaten Intel to the 1ghz race back in 2000, Intel was still the completely dominant force in the corporate and server space. With Opteron, the underdog finally had a chance to make it where it counts—the datacenter and corporate office. Speculation was high that Opteron could be the weapon to turn the tide.

History has shown that they did make it happen. Because of the Opteron, major OEMs such as Dell started selling servers with chips other than Intel in them. Competition is a beautiful thing, and so we say Happy Birthday, Opteron!

Here’s a bit of Icrontic trivia for you; the Opteron was the reason that I met Thrax for the very first time. He wanted so desperately to see one in real life that he risked bringing his young 16 year old self over to some creepy internet guy’s office on the east side of Detroit. Now he’s one of my very good friends. Thanks AMD! :)

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13 Comments:

  1. Thrax
    22 Apr '09, 6:02 pm

    No 16 year old nerds were badtouched in the birth of this friendship.

  2. pigflipper
    22 Apr '09, 9:36 pm
    Quoting Thrax

    No 16 year old nerds were badtouched in the birth of this friendship.

    Well, not many anyways.

  3. Gate28
    22 Apr '09, 10:19 pm
    Quoting Thrax

    Not enough 16 year old nerds were badtouched in the birth of this friendship.

    You guys are weird.

  4. Thrax
    22 Apr '09, 10:23 pm

    Lame fix.

  5. drasnor
    22 Apr '09, 10:41 pm

    My sledgehammers power the home server now.

    -drasnor

  6. primesuspect
    22 Apr '09, 10:49 pm

    This server is still running on Opteron 840s

  7. drasnor
    23 Apr '09, 12:38 am

    Oh, you cool kids and your 800-series Opterons. Meanwhile, this plebe makes do with a pair of 248's.

    -drasnor

  8. DrLiam
    23 Apr '09, 4:14 am
    No 16 year old nerds were badtouched in the birth of this friendship.

    Sexual Harassment Panda supports this message.

  9. Cliff_Forster
    23 Apr '09, 10:24 am

    I always say, its impossible to understand where we are going, without a true appreciation of history. (I'm a bit of a history nerd)

    So this applies to tech as well, the path of innovation, understanding where we have come from, it gives you a solid appreciation of the amazing things that are available now, and what might come.

    Folks, less than fifteen years ago, you were using windows 3.1 on a CPU that ran at less than 100 megahertz. Think about that, let it sink in.

    Go back just six years, the dawn of the 64 bit era, be it single core. Now your going to slap six cores in a chip for amazing multitasking throughput and virtulazation, and its not just for big corporations, small businesses can afford this tech, its amazing how far tech has come.

    So, where will we be in another six years? I suppose that's why we are all nuts for this stuff? I love the history of it, and I enjoy dreaming of the possibility's.

  10. AlexDeGruven
    23 Apr '09, 10:58 am

    This is very true. Today (even though it's a Mac, it was the fastest price I could find) you can pick up a dual-socket quad-core (8 cores) system with 6GB of RAM (Remember when RAM was over $100 per MB? I sure do) for $3,200. In two years, that level of hardware will be running in sub-$1,000 machines.

    Progress is great as long as you're not trying to keep up with it.

  11. Callred
    27 Apr '09, 1:31 pm

    I just retired my Opteron 180 powering an nVidia 8800 GTS 320 that played Crysis (medium settings, but Still) Great chip.

    When I took over as a support tech for a young ISP in '95 I was still walking people through setting up Trumpet Winsock for their connections on 14.4k modems (even 9600 baud). As the first one in the group to load Win 95 at home, I became the 'expert' on it. Fun times.. we have come a long way.

  12. drasnor
    28 Apr '09, 12:23 am
    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    I always say, its impossible to understand where we are going, without a true appreciation of history. (I'm a bit of a history nerd)

    So this applies to tech as well, the path of innovation, understanding where we have come from, it gives you a solid appreciation of the amazing things that are available now, and what might come.

    Folks, less than fifteen years ago, you were using windows 3.1 on a CPU that ran at less than 100 megahertz. Think about that, let it sink in.

    Fifteen years ago I had a Mac. The only PCs I'd ever seen ran DOS. I had a 12" fixed-resolution monitor that was bigger than the school's 9" monitors. I also had an AOL account, used BBSes, played MUDs, played multiplayer Descent on a null modem cable, and used ClarisWorks and HyperCard for word processing and presentations respectively. I ran all of my games from a top-loading NEC 2x SCSI CD-ROM.

    That floppy? I copied that floppy.

    -drasnor

  13. Shorty
    29 Apr '09, 5:20 am

    I believe I was the first to see one in the flesh as I was visiting MSIs offices down South and they just got their first batch in from AMD

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