AMD Releases Brace of New Opteron Chips

Today AMD is announcing the release of five new Opteron server processors. Intended for multi-socket server systems, two of the new CPUs have 8 cores, and three have an impressive 12 cores. All additions to AMD's expanding Opteron 6100 series, they range in clock from 1.8Ghz to a relatively speedy 2.6Ghz. With this release, AMD is pumping up the scalability of their Magny-Cours architecture, as some of the processors have good performance with low power usage, whilst the top-end SE Opteron guns for the top Xeons with a more generous power envelope. So which CPUs are included in this release?

At the bottom end we have AMD's power-saving HE lineup. Saddled with an ACP (Average CPU Power. Note that this is much less stringent than TDP as far as what kind of load we're talking about) of 65W, AMD nevertheless takes good advantage of this slim power envelope, with their 8-core Opteron 6132 HE running at 2.2Ghz and their 12-core 6166 chugging along at 1.8Ghz. Higher up in the power envelope we have their 80W ACP suffix-less Opterons. Here we have the 8-core 2.6Ghz 6140 and the 12-core 6176 running at 2.3Ghz. At the top end we find the mighty Opteron 6180 SE, a 105W 12-core running at 2.5Ghz.

At the very least, AMD is definitely keeping things fairly competitive in the enterprise market, and their top-end Opterons ought to give Intel's big bad Xeons a run for their money. Additionally, this is likely the last release of AMD's current-gen hardware before they start rolling out Bulldozer sometime soon. You can read AMD's announcement here.