AMD Provides More Information About The Upcoming CPUs

After Advanced Micro Devices officially launched its quad core Opteron processing units designed for servers which are based on the Barcelona cores, the processor manufacturing company also revealed the logo of the new and upcoming desktop intended quad core processor, the Phenom.

The desktop version of the much awaited and speculated about Barcelona central processing unit, Phenom, is expected to become available in significant quantities in December most probably and, according to the news site tgdaily, it will come as both quad core and dual core models. The quad core design of the Phenom class of processors will be codenamed Agena and Stars, while the dual core variant will be available under the Kuma and Stars designations.

The dual core Phenoms will reach clock speeds between 2.0 to 2.4 GHz at launch, while during the first quarter of 2008 they will receive a speed increase to 2.8GHz. At the same time, the quad core models will go for lower clock speeds, as they are expected to stay between 2.0 and 2.4GHz. The FX designation for the enthusiast market segment will be kept as well and AMD plans to release processors sporting this brand sometime during the first quarter of 2008 with clock speeds going as high as 2.6GHz.

On the server side, AMD plans to release a new version of the Barcelona processors but that will only happen in the last months of the year. A while ago, AMD said that the Barcelona would come with the BA revision, as that revision is the improved and fixed version of the first B1 iteration of the quad core architecture that came with some serious performance bugs. The second iteration, named B2, is likely to come during the fourth quarter of the year and it will provide a speed boost up to 3GHz and probably higher.

Apart from the higher clock speeds, the B2 revision will also bring some lower powering voltages and there are many hopes linked to that iteration as it should help AMD gain some more ground against Intel on both the server and the consumer market segments.