AMD sets August release for quad-core Opteron
By Colleen Taylor, Contributing Editor -- EDN, June 29, 2007
Finally setting a more concrete debut timeline, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) today said that its long-awaited quad-core Opteron processors are planned to ship in both standard and low power versions in August.
Lagging a bit on the company's original plans for a Q2 quad-core launch, AMD said it expects that its Barcelona processors will begin shipping for revenue in August, with systems from AMD platform partners beginning to ship in September. According to the company, the shipment will be the first time AMD has made both standard and low power parts immediately available as part of a new processor launch.
The chipmaker's rival and reigning industry leader Intel Corp. has a significant leg up on the second-ranked AMD in the quad-core realm. In November, Intel debuted its first quad-core processor families, the Quad-Core Xeon 5300 for business and Intel Core 2 Extreme quad-core for gamers.
AMD claims, however, that its quad-core offering will be worth the wait. The company said its Barcelona processor will be the world's first x86 CPU to integrate four processing cores on a single die of silicon; Intel's quad core consists of two dual core die stacked in a single package. Manufactured on 65-nm silicon-on-insulator process technology, the processors are planned to have availability at launch in a range of frequencies up to 2Ghz; AMD said it expects its native quad-core processors to scale to higher frequencies in Q4 in both standard and special edition versions.
Designed to operate within the same thermal envelopes as current generation AMD Opteron processors, with which the Barcelona will be backwards-compatible, AMD said it estimates that the new processors can provide a performance increase up to 70 percent on certain database applications and up to 40 percent on certain floating point applications.
