14 DAY TRIAL // Chip manufacturer AMD is ready to launch and ship its Barcelona-based Opteron server processors. Although they have been slated for official launch quite a while ago, the processor silicon was affected by a crippling bug that would occur when the system is working at full load.
Advanced Micro Devices is currently selling its affected Opteron processors through its channel and distribution partners, but the chips can be used in special systems only. For instance, the processor is more likely to reach full load in virtualized environments or in servers that use nested memory pages.
AMD will start shipping its new batch of Barcelona Opteron server processors this week to its channel and distribution partners as well. The event has been officially announced by a company spokesperson yesterday, and, according to the same press release, the first system vendors to snatch the long-awaited chips will be Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The two PC manufacturers will ship their Barcelona-powered computers in the second quarter of this year.
The new processors will be based on the B3 silicon stepping, that is alleged to have fixed all the TLB-related bugs. Although the most important system vendors had been working on their upcoming server offerings, they have been waiting for the B3 revision to arrive before launching their products.
"We expect to start shipping systems in early Q2," said HP spokesperson Eric Krueger on Thursday. "We are anxious to get these systems moving soon," he added. The Barcelona-powered system has been announced and fully documented for about one month now, and Krueger officially admitted that the HP ProLiant DL585 will come with AMD's new chip. "Look for us to expand our portfolio (of systems) too," Krueger added.
Dell spokespersons also confirmed that the company will come with their own server offerings during the second quarter of 2008. The Barcelona processors based on the B3 silicon stepping have been thoroughly tested, and even torrent site IsoHunt had two testing units.