Advanced Micro Devices is cutting costs and reducing the number ofits data centers worldwide with the help of the cloud and hardwareupgrades, an AMD executive said Thursday. AMD will reduce the number of data centers it has to three by 2014,of which two will be in North America and one in Asia, said FaridDana, director of IT services at AMD, in an interview. AMDcurrently has 12 data centers, down from 18 in mid-2009 when theconsolidation effort began. The company's goal is to cut costs by shifting more tasks to thecloud, and by opening data centers in locations that have lowerpower costs and lower taxes, Dana said. AMD is moving away fromhigh-cost-per-watt places like Boston and California andestablishing data centers in places like Suwanee, Georgia. "We've gained some tax efficiency from the location," Dana said."One of the factors is also disaster recovery. That's why we havethree data centers and not one, and we are geographicallydispersed." Dana has a list of 40 physical factors to take into account whendeciding where to locate a data center, include proximity totransit, weather, water sources and available electricity. Choiceshave to be made carefully, and something as simple as a nearby railline could cause vibrations that harm server operations, he said. But in downsizing, Dana wants to ensure AMD's engineers have accessto the resources needed to design chips. AMD is trying toconsolidate servers and reduce expenses such as electric billsthrough higher utilization rates. The company is also reducingnetwork latency so engineers get quicker access to servers. AMD is operating a private cloud that makes key EDA (electronicdesign applications) accessible to engineers worldwide. Thecompany's engineering tasks are executed in real time across avirtual grid of servers that has 120,000 CPU cores. AMD tries tomaintain close to a 100 percent utilization rate, andvirtualization tools help all cores seem like one "giantnumber-crunching machine," Dana said. "We want to do compute anywhere -- it doesn't matter where theengineer sits as long as they get the performance they need," Danasaid. Putting applications in the cloud consolidates computing resourcesand centralizes the computing infrastructure, Dana said. Data ismore secure because it is stored in fewer, centralized locations. Many companies offer cloud services, such as Amazon, but AMD keptan internal cloud as it wanted to have stronger control over usageof EDA tools. The company has deployed specific tools to track downwhere resources need to be assigned, and cloud transactions changeby region as employees worldwide have been assigned differenttasks, Dana said. "It's not cost-effective to do it externally," Dana said. Over the past few years, closure of data centers has resulted inhuge savings, Dana said. The company is retiring old data centersas contracts end and as hardware retires, replacing it with newequipment and hardware, which requires the same level of investmentas upgrading existing data centers. Idle CPU cycles cost the company, and server upgrades have nettedAMD millions in savings, Dana said. Socket compatibility provides acost-effective way to upgrade to faster and more power-efficientchips without buying extra hardware. "For socket upgrades you have to do your homework," Dana said.Upgrades could be done to cut costs or add performance, or to testout new chips, he said. But as servers move to the next generation, it's better to changethe motherboard, Dana said. Hardware depreciation could range fromthree to five years. "It's more cost-effective to change the board than to put theprocessor on top of it," Dana said. Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductorsfor IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh . Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com. I am an expert from artificialgrass-lawn.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Artificial Grass Glue Manufacturer , China Field Turf Artificial Turf, Artificial Turf Football,and more.
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