AMD Native Quad-Core Barcelona Opteron Launched

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, September 10, 2007, 12:01 AM EDT

AMD has officially taken the wraps off their new series of Opteron processors today and have released their first native quad-core processor to the wild. Welcome to the jungle Barcelona.

We cover specific architecture details, processor model numbering, speeds and feeds of the new Barcelona core Opertons and even offer a glimpse of what's on the horizon with AMD’s Shanghai and Sandtiger cores. Here's a snip from the piece...

"In a move reminiscent of their campaign from long ago to debunk the "megahertz myth" with processor performance rating-type model numbers, AMD is announcing a new power consumption metric called "ACP" or "Average CPU Power". AMD claims historically that they took a much more conservative approach with providing measurements for traditional TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings, opting to list worst case, maximum numbers versus Intel's average or "typical" rating guidelines. As a result, AMD's processor architecture, at least on paper, appeared significantly more power hungry than it was in practice."

You can read the rest right here.

Tags: AMD, ATI, Core, quad-core, Opteron, launch, bar, arc, NAT, Ive, ativ, CEL, AR, AM

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com