On Tuesday, AMD and three server makers attending Computex Taipei showed some of the first server platforms running the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, codenamed Barcelona. Servers from Supermicro Computer, Tyan Computer and Uniwide Technologies will be among the first on the market based on the chip maker's quad-core processor. In addition, the Taiwanese motherboard designer and computer maker, Asus, said it will support Barcelona as well. AMD is counting on Barcelona to boost its sales, and market share, however first impressions were not too favorable:
One vendor demonstrated Barcelona to DailyTech running at 1.6GHz. Current AMD Barcelona samples are not scaling too well. AMD partners confirmed the highest running, POST and OS capable, Barcelona processor is 2.0 GHz. AMD previously posted benchmarks of a simulated 2.6 GHz Barcelona.
AMD executives said motherboard designers and users of existing AMD Opteron processor-based systems using DDR2 memory will be able to upgrade from the current dual-core Opteron to the quad-core Barcelona with a BIOS upgrade as Barcelona will use the same chip sets, sockets and thermal envelopes as the dual-core processors. The chip and some systems using the chips remain on schedule for the third quarter of 2007, according to a company spokesman.