Opteron 45nm Quad-Core "Shanghai" Available

AMD today announced widespread availability of its 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, delivering up to 35 percent more performance with up to a 35 percent decrease in power consumption at idle. With IT decision-makers looking to do more with less, the newest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor can help drive data center efficiencies and reduce complexities with innovations that offer superior virtualization performance and increased performance-per-watt. Global OEMs are expected to immediately offer enterprise and SMB customers more than 25 systems, available between launch today and the end of the year, based on the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed “Shanghai”

The latest Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors at the 75-watt ACP ranging from 2.3 to 2.7 GHz are available immediately, with enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE (55-watt) and SE (105-watt) processors planned to follow in Q1 2009.

“Shanghai” will be a truly global product launch for AMD. A major online and print marketing campaign in support of the launch kicks off today and launch events are happening worldwide beginning today and continuing over the next few weeks.

Anandtech has tested out AMD's "Shanghai" Opteron with a few database tests.

As you've seen, AMD is still competitive with Intel's 3.0 GHz Harpertown in the database workloads that we've shown here. We were quite surprised that Shanghai was able to meet and, in some cases, pass Harpertown at various workload levels in some of the benchmarks. Obviously, when it comes to power, AMD is still leading this space by a significant margin. FB-DIMMs obliterate any power efficiency in Intel's processors, especially when you have eight (or more in some cases) of them present in a server.

"Shanghai" stories:
Computerworld-AMD speeds up, shrinks its Shanghai quad-core
Infoworld-AMD bails out IT
ZDNet blogs-AMD: Does the resurrection start with ‘Shanghai’?
Information Week- AMD Refreshes Opteron With 45nm 'Shanghai' Quad-Core Processors
CRN-First Look: AMD's 'Shanghai' Opteron
Reuters-AMD announces fast, energy-saving chip

Shanghai 45nm wafer:

85 Server Motherboards and Barebones Servers for Shanghai

More than 85 server motherboards and barebones servers are validated to support the upcoming 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor and are available today. Leading server infrastructure providers including ASUS, Supermicro, and Tyan are currently shipping high-performance server motherboards.

These boards are optimized for OEMs, ODMs, solution providers and business customers to take full advantage of the enhanced power management and virtualization capabilities and unprecedented levels of price/performance-per-watt delivered by the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, codenamed “Shanghai”

EE Times believes AMD is back on track with Shanghai.

Advanced Micro Devices is back on track with its latest 45 nm Shanghai processor driving an uptick in sales in high-end server markets, according to a handful of integrators. Longer term, high performance computing (HPC) companies expect to see neck-and neck competition between AMD and Intel as both move to six-core server processors in 2009.