AMD Begins Revenue Shipments of Twelve-Core Opteron Microprocessors

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices said Friday that it had started shipments of its highly-anticipated twelve-core AMD Opteron microprocessors code-named Magny-Cours. The company indicated that the shipments are limited and are intended to prepare for the launch of servers powered by the new chips due later this quarter.

“We have been aggressively sampling production-level parts to customers for nearly 30 days now and have actually shipped a limited number of production parts to allow customers to prepare for launch – on track for later this quarter,” said Phil Hughes, a spokesman for AMD.

AMD Opteron microprocessors transformed Advanced Micro Devices from a producer of inexpensive desktop chips into a world-class supplier of microprocessors for servers back in 2003. At that time the code-named SledgeHammer processor with one processing core and up to 2.40GHz clock-speed brought a number of breakthrough innovations that redefined the mainstream server industry, including integrated memory controller, chip-to-chip interconnect for multi-processor systems, x86-64 capability and a number of other improvements. Seven years later the Magny-Cours processor is supposed to once again transform the server market with twelve x86 processing engines, quad-channel memory controller as well as new high-speed chip-to-chip interconnection. This time however it will have to fight against Intel Corp.’s octa-core processor that not only have the benefits of the Nehalem micro-architecture, but also boasts with a number of reliability, availability, serviceability (RAS) advantages presently only found in mission-critical servers.

Central processing units for servers are sold at a great price-premium, which is why it is crucially important for both Sunnyvale, California-based AMD as well as Santa Clara, California-based Intel to have the best microprocessors for server markets as such chips bring very high profit.

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