When Intel rolls out its Nehalem processors later this year, AMD appears to be better prepared than in late 2006 when Core began its triumph and until today pretty much wiped out all of the gains AMD Opteron has made in previous years. On the server side, AMD will counter Intel with the "Shanghai" quad-core CPU, which will be based on the current Barcelona technology, but will be manufactured in 45 nm and bring performance and power consumption benefits.

According to vice president Randy Allen, Shanghai will deliver about 20% more speed than Barcelona. While the chip will remain compatible with the current Socket F (1207) platform, the L3 cache will triple to 6 MB, 3-lane HT3 support will be integrated and DDR memory support will be extended to 800 MHz devices. AMD claims that the idle power consumption of the new CPUs will be 20% below their 65 nm counterparts.

Production of the 45 nm Shanghai quad-core chip, which has been sampled to server vendors, is scheduled to begin late this year, while first products should be surfacing in Q1 2009. In the second half of 2009, AMD plans to release a single-die 6-core Socket F processor code-named "Istanbul". Offered for two- and four-socket systems, the chip will be clocked at lower clock speeds than the quad-cores.

You can read the entire article at TG Daily.