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AMD gets big server order from China Mobile

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-11-18 11:03

China Mobile Communications Corporation (China Mobile), the leading mobile telecom services provider in China, purchased AMD Opteron-based servers in their annual server procurement bidding project for the year 2008. With a procurement of more than 2,000 servers, AMD Opteron-based servers accounted for more than 50% of the total amount, most of which will be provided by IBM and HP. This order was deemed as a triumph of AMD in domestic telecommunication industry as well as a breakthrough for x86 servers to power telecommunications solutions in China.

As a partner of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, China Mobile runs the world’s largest network and customer base with more than 370 million users. With a huge requirement for IT equipments, the company holds annual procurement bidding activities, attracting great attention from IT manufactures.

This latest procurement purchased more than 2,000 servers. The order includes 2P rack, 4P rack and 2P blade AMD Opteron-based servers. All these types occupy a large proportion of this order. All the 2P and 4P rack servers are based on AMD Opteron computing platforms. In terms of quantity, AMD Opteron-based servers accounted for more than 50% in the bidding.

According to industry analysts, the increasing concern to cost and power consumption, combined with the rapidly enhanced performance and stability of x86 servers, makes it more and more popular to use x86 servers in telecom industry. A manager from AMD, who is in charge of this bid said, "The AMD computing platform based servers ordered by China Mobile will be mainly provided by IBM and HP. Based on AMD’s unique Direct Connect Architecture innovation, these servers, featuring both high performance and low power consumption, will power China Mobile’s demanding applications with a stable and reliable computing platform."

China Mobile has strict requirements for the performance and stability of its IT equipment. Before making the final purchasing decision, experts from the Research Institution of China Mobile conducted a comprehensive benchmark of all servers offered in the bidding, including a thorough testing of database, Web applications, CPU capability, memory and I/O performance. The results indicated that the outstanding performance of AMD Opteron-based servers can meet the demanding requirements of China Mobile well.

Technical people from AMD added, "The outstanding performance of AMD Opteron-based servers in the testing is a result of AMD’s advanced architecture. The AMD Opteron processor adopts lots of industry leading innovative technologies, including Direct Connect Architecture and an integrated memory controller, together with AMD’s unique HyperTransport technology, it can successfully eliminates the bottleneck in the traditional front bus architecture and reduces latency in memory access. By doing so, AMD Opteron processor greatly enhances the overall performance for various real applications in telecom industry like database and Web applications."