14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has announced the official launch date of its next generation of processors. The day selected was the 10th of September and if the manufacturing company keeps its promise of not launching processors only on paper, the quad core Barcelonas should be available for purchase beginning with the 11th September. The manufacturer desperately needed the native quad core architecture to be a real success both among end users and among other hardware manufacturers and vendors, as well as system integrators that may support and promote AMD.
According to the news site TGDaily the launch of the Barcelona processors may very well mark the recovery of AMD and the restoring of its competitiveness on the single and multi processor server market and prepare itself for the Tigerton, that Intel will aim more at the multi processor market segment. Most sources believe that Barcelona quad core processors will arrive with clock speeds that reach up to 2.0GHz, while future iteration of the Barcelona family may jump to 2.4GHz or more. Alas, those faster processors will not be available until the last quarter of the year.
Bringing the native quad core Barcelona processors to the desktop market segment is another task that AMD faces. That market is constantly growing and here most hardware manufacturers and vendors are always under pressure from users. AMD said in a statement that the desktop version of the Barcelona processors will soon follow their server aimed brethren and from the 10th of September users will have to wait 60 to 90 days to be able to get a Phenom class processor. On one side, the time frame of the Phenom is very good (mid-November to mid-December) as it would enable AMD to catch the Christmas shopping season when computer hardware sales are booming. On the other hand, this long wait may cause more users to switch sides and go buy an Intel processor instead.