Central Processing Unit (Cpu); Overview - Asus SK8N User Manual

2.4

Central Processing Unit (CPU)

2.4.1 Overview

The motherboard comes with a surface mount 940-pin Zero Insertion
Force (ZIF) socket. The socket is designed for the new AMD Opteron™
Processor in the 940-pin lidded ceramic micro PGA package. The AMD
Opteron™ processor is a 64-bit server and workstation processor based
on the industry-standard x86 instruction set architecture that can run x86-
based 32 and 64-bit applications. Integrated with the processor is a low-
latency high-bandwidth memory controller and a highly scalable
HyperTransport™ technology-based system bus. Also, the processor
includes Error Correcting Code (ECC) protection for L1 and L2 cache data
and DRAM ECC protection with chipkill.
Additionally, the 128-bit-wide data paths of the AMD Opteron™ processor
run applications faster than traditional processors with only 32 or 64-bit
wide data paths. Current 32-bit processors have a 4 gigabyte memory
addressing cap; the AMD Opteron™ has a 40-bit physical and 48-bit
virtual addressing cap that enable systems to address up to 1 terabyte of
physical memory space and 256 terabytes of virtual memory.
Note in the illustration that the CPU
has a chamfer in one corner. This
mark indicates the processor Pin A1
that should match a specific corner of
the CPU socket.
Chamfer
2-4 Chapter 2: Hardware information