AMD Launches New Opteron Processors

By Geoff Duncan Published August 15, 2006

Chipmaker Intel‘s Xeon and Core 2 Duo processors have stolen a lot of thunder lately, but rival AMD wants to prove it still has its head in the game, and today announced Next-Generation AMD Opteron processors aimed at the high-end server and workstation market. Although the new chips are an incremental upgrade and don’t give the company an edge over Intel’s latest offerings, they do begin to set AMD up for a transition to quad-core processing in 2007.

The new Opterons have a new four-digit model numbering system. The first digitl will continue to represent the processor’s scalability (1-way, 2-way, 8-way, or, presumably, n-way) while the second digital will be a 2 to represent the second socket generation. The CPUs will come in two flavors: a Socket AM2 version for the 1200 series processors, and new Socket F for the 2200 and 8200 series CPUs. Socket F is intended to provide a “seamless” upgrade route for quad-core AMD processors due to be available toward the middle of 2007. The new Opterons are also the first AMD processors for servers to support DDR2 memory.

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The new Opterons support Pacifica virtualization to support guest operating systems, and Presidio security technologies which isolates virtual machine memory and aids support of virtual users.

Expect to see the new Opertons in rack servers as well as workstations; Hewlett-Packard has already announced support for the latest Opertons in its ProLiant rack servers and server blades; IBM plans to roll out System x and BladeCenter servers with the Net-Generation AMD Opterons; Egenera, Rackable Systems, Supermicro, and other partners should announce additional system offerings today.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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