"Barcelona" in 2007
AMD today demonstrated its quad-core Barcelona Opteron processors. The demonstration was shown on a quad quad-core system for a total of 16 cores. AMD touts its upcoming Barcelona Opteron quad-core processors as the world’s first native quad-core design. The native quad-core design packs four cores on a single die instead of Intel’s method of putting two dual-core dice on a single package.
Upgradability will be a key point in AMD’s quad-core strategy. AMD claims the upgrade from dual-core Opteron processors to quad-core processors is relatively straightforward. All that’s needed to plop a quad-core Barcelona processor in existing Socket F Opteron systems is a BIOS update—similar to Intel’s quad-core Clovertown upgradeability approach.
Interestingly enough AMD claims quad-core processors will have the same thermal and electrical envelope as its dual-core Opteron processors for greater performance-per-watt. The upcoming Barcelona core will be similar to AMD's upcoming Stars core processors for desktops which launches near the same timeframe.
AMD expects to deliver quad-core Barcelona processors beginning in mid-2007 for two to eight-way servers and workstations.
"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007
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