Does AMD 'Average CPU Power' metric have legs?
With AMD's launch of Barcelona comes a new metric: Average CPU Power.
While the Average CPU Power (ACP) metric reflects a need--everyone wants to know how much power servers are gobbling up--it won't gain significant traction until others follow suit.
Until then, ACP is marketing for AMD.
AMD describes ACP as the following:
AMD also today introduced the Average CPU Power (ACP) metric, which represents processor power usage, including cores, integrated memory controller, and HyperTransport technology links, while running a suite of typical and relevant commercially useful high utilization workloads to be more indicative of the power consumption that end-users can expect. ACP is a useful metric for data center operators when estimating power budgets to size their datacenters. AMD will continue to provide thermal design power (TDP) specifications to platform designers in AMD power and thermal datasheets. AMD is introducing Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors today at the 55- and 75-watt ACP.
The problem: There's no ACP comparison. How do these ACP levels match up with other AMD chips? How about Intel?
That latter comparison will be sticky for sure, but ACP (if that's the metric that wins) needs to be measured across a wide range of products to have any meaning.
More reading:
- AMD's Barcelona not a savior, yet.
- On AMD’s big day, Intel ups its outlook.
- George Ou's AMD coverage.
- All AMD resources.