Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.

AMD Taps the Power of Sun Grid Compute Utility to Get to Market Quickly and Cost-Efficiently

Founded in 1969 and based in Sunnyvale, California, Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) designs and produces innovative microprocessors and low-power processor solutions for the computer, communications and consumer electronics industries.

Customer Challenges

Enable timely product testing to ensure compliance with tight production schedule
Ensure rapid access to millions of CPU hours of computing power without capital investment or lengthy procurement delays
Enable cost-efficient use of existing resources

Solution

AMD is well aware of the extraordinary business benefits of grid computing—the company has been running its own high-performance computing (HPC) grid for more than a decade. Recently, to ensure the timely delivery to market of a new product line, AMD turned to the Sun Grid Utility at Sun's Network.com Web site to quickly access the additional compute power required for a simulation program. Access to the Sun Grid, priced at $1 per CPU hour, gives AMD the flexible capacity it needs, when its production schedule requires it—without additional investment in hardware.

Business Results

Over 1 million dollars of capital investment avoided
Time to availability of needed computing resources shortened by four weeks
Simplified IT management, as Sun Grid resources are externally managed by Sun
More flexibility in scheduling by accessing additional capacity on demand during peak production cycles, and improved utilization of existing resources

Products and Services

Sun Grid Compute Utility

Story Details

The AMD name has been synonymous with customer-centric innovation and high-quality manufacturing since its inception in 1969. Over its three-decade history, AMD has driven superior quality by putting all AMD integrated circuits through rigorous design and testing to offer products that meet its customers' most stringent requirements—even those products destined for the simplest of devices.

To support this level of testing and design, AMD created its own high-performance compute grid more than a decade ago. Today, the AMD internal grid includes more than 5,000 servers, 500 workstations and well over 10,000 CPUs, and is deployed across AMD's six design centers in Asia, Europe and North America. Compute jobs run on the AMD grid support all phases of architectural design, functional design and verification, circuit analysis, integration, electrical characterization and mask generation.

High-performance compute requirements are driven by the complexity and size of AMD designs, the ongoing refinement of the design process, the advances made in AMD manufacturing process technology and by the number of concurrent designs in AMD's product pipeline. Processes this intensive can tax even AMD's massive resources.

" For AMD, the Sun Grid provides the variable capacity we need to help shorten our production cycles and ensure that no part of testing or development is delayed because of a lack of compute power. The Sun Grid is a great tool in our arsenal. "

— Mike Lowe, Director, Silicon Design Engineering, AMD

Recently, rather than purchase additional computers to run a simulation application needed to get a new product to market, AMD opted instead to turn to technology partner Sun Microsystems and Sun's unique Grid Compute Utility solution.

According to Mike Lowe, AMD's director of silicon design engineering, the value of the Sun Grid lies in the flexibility to either quickly procure additional ready-to-use compute resources or to satisfy a temporary increased need for compute resources without having to go through the time consuming process of capital expenditure approvals and equipment procurement lead times. AMD determined that purchasing additional equipment for its specific need could have resulted in underutilized resources after the peak compute needs concluded. And because time on the Sun Grid can be purchased incrementally, on an as-needed basis, it offers AMD maximum flexibility with no long-term commitment.

Instead, AMD is able to reserve time on the Sun Grid Compute Utility when the production schedule demands it. Now resources can be supplied to all programs under development rather than prioritized due to shortages of available compute cycles. Short-term peak demands can be satisfied without impacting program schedules.

The ability to get to market quickly was another factor. Toward the end of the design cycle, the number of tests to be run begins to mount. In order to meet internal deadlines and get the product to market on time and on budget, the AMD design group needed access to thousands of CPUs quickly and easily. The time needed to add capacity to the internal grid—procuring the capital to make the purchase, ordering the computers, getting them online—could have an adverse effect on the production schedule.

Access to the Sun Grid is so simple, the process is largely transparent to internal users at AMD. And because the Sun Grid is powered by AMD processors, the company can be confident that the Sun Grid’s performance will match that of its own internal grid.

Finally, in Sun, AMD knew it had a technology partner it could trust. The two companies have been allied since 2003, when Sun first worked with AMD to deliver powerful, low-cost 64-bit systems based on the x86 architecture. AMD's own internal grid is powered by AMD Opteron processors, which provide an unbeatable combination of high performance and operational cost. And AMD Opteron processors power the Sun Grid as well: AMD Opteron processors power the innovative new Sun Fire enterprise server family, delivering breakthrough performance with dramatic space and power efficiency.

But perhaps most persuasive was the fact that AMD, like Sun, understands the business benefits of grid computing offered as a utility—which gives companies large and small access to the high-performance computing resources they need when they need them, affordably, easily and securely.