Socket G34 will become new platform for coming Opteron processors from AMD and one of the more astonishing bits is that it’s rectangular. The socket we have today are square but Socket G34 is a lot wider and the reason is because that’s the only way the processors will fit. AMD has released additional bits and pieces on the coming dodeca-core Magny-Cours processor and it’s painfully obvious that there are a lot of logic and transistors inside. Magny-Cours is a so called MCM design (Multi-Chip-Module) where two hexa-core Istanbul CPUs are fitted inside the same package.
AMD connects the two six-core dies with HyperTransport links inside the processor and also use the HT interface for connecting multiple sockets in multi-CPU configurations.
The large number of HT links is one of the main reasons the processor requires 1944 pins to operate, and forces the socket to take its large and wide shape.
AMD’s way of connecting the processors of a Socket G34 system has been further detailed at semiaccurate:
In the end, AMD fixed the biggest problem with multiple sockets, latency. Part of that was the probe filter in Istanbul, but a much more important step was the new interconnect scheme. It isn’t fully interconnected, but socket G34 is very close. For what is effectively an eight socket system, packaged into four MCMs, AMD seems to have done a very good job.
Istanbul core
Magny-Cours with two Istanbul cores and loads of HT links
