SAN FRANCISCO
(Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices has started selling the new
generation of its Opteron quad core processors for servers, AMD
announced on Wednesday, nearly one year after Intel launched its own 45
nanometer chip.
After a troubled launch of its earlier Barcelona chip, AMD waited
until the new chip, called "Shanghai," was actually in distribution to
make its formal announcement.
The chip is called quad core because each core operates as an
independent computing device on the same chip. The size historically
refers to the smallest feature on a chip.
The Shanghai chip has high energy efficiency, AMD says. For example,
it automatically turns off some parts of the chip when they are not in
use, even for short periods of time, the company said.
The Shanghai is designed to work well with so-called virtualization,
in which space is saved on servers by running separate "virtual"
machines across drives, instead of requiring separate drives for each
machine.
AMD said that two versions of the chip are available now, with enhanced versions available in early January.
IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Dell are among 25 systems
vendors who will be shipping machines this quarter with the new chip on
board, AMD said.
AMD quoted a Hewlett-Packard executive in praise of the new chip.
Paul Gottsegen, vice president of marketing for Industry Standard
Service, said HP had "experienced unparalleled success over the past
four years working with AMD in bringing AMD Opteron processor-based
platforms to customers."
The company said that the processors are easier to replace than Intel's. Intel says that is not true.
AMD said it is looking to increase market share with the server. The
market intelligence firm iSuppli said it had only 12 percent in the
third quarter.
(Reporting by David Lawksy, additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London; Editing by Gary Hill)
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