14 DAY TRIAL // Even as days go by and the Barcelona class of processors is just around the corner, Advanced Micro Devices thinks that the dual core processors intended for use in servers and the like are still having a future ahead, so the company announced the launch of a new line of Opteron class processors with running frequency of 3.2GHz.
The new Opteron processors are part of the high performance Special Edition, SE for short, family of products that are more expensive than the rest of the AMD Opteron products, both in terms of power consumption and money. The bright side of the SE server processors is that they are offering a higher performance than the typical, mainstream line of products. The new chips are the AMD Opteron processors models 8224 SE and 2224 SE that operate at 3.20GHz and they are built with a thermal design power, TDP for short, of 120W. Intended for use in multiprocessor environments or dual processor machines, the SE CPUs are complemented by the more mainstream products like the models 8222, 2222 and 1222 that operate at 3.0GHz, while their TDP drops to more mundane 95 and 103 watts.
The new Special Edition AMD Opteron processors are considered the very top of the line when it comes to dual core CPUs intended for servers and now they are targeted at users that do not want to immediately upgrade to the incoming quad core processor design. As the launch date of the quad core Barcelona processors is coming fast and Intel has its own plans with the server market it is very unlikely that the Special Edition Opterons that AMD just released will enjoy a wide deployment in mission critical environments.
Because the Barcelonas will offer a number of performance improvements, keeping the price tag at an affordable level for a processing unit designed for servers, AMD might not release another high performance generation of dual core CPUs, so this line of Opterons might be the last of its kind. As the server market will still need dual core central processing units, AMD will most likely continue the development of the current line of Opteron CPUs but the manufacturing company will focus its attention and resources on building more energy efficient products and not more powerful ones.