ProcessorAt long last, it appears that AMD’s native quad-core Barcelona chip will finally arrive in the month of August. Called the “Quad-Core Opteron,” the first of the Barcelona chips will run at speeds of up to 2Ghz and come in both standard and low-powered versions. The first Barcelona servers are expected to come in September.

Because the Barcelona will use the same 1,207-pin socket already in use by the company’s dual-core Opteron, users will be able to swap in the new quad-core processors with a relatively simple BIOS upgrade.

Some analysts said that the initial clock-speed of the Barcelona is below expectations, though Randy Allen, vice president of AMD’s server division promised that the company will be releasing faster versions soon after the initial launch.

Quote of Randy Allen from The Daily Tech Rag:

More than ever before, customers are expecting energy-efficient and performance-per-watt leadership as much as absolute performance. With this new reality of computing, greater performance at the expense of greater power consumption is non longer an option.

AMD has prioritized production of our lower power and standard power products because our customers and ecosystem demand it, and we firmly believe that the introduction of our native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor will deliver on the promise of the highest level performance-per-watt the industry has ever seen.

AMD is not sitting still on the dual-core front either. It will be offering dual-core Opterons starting August 6, at speeds of up to 3Ghz.

You can read more about AMD Ramps Up Dual-Core Opterons to 3GHz (eWeek).

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