AUSTIN, TEXAS — With Intel's Nehalem-based Xeons gathering like a storm on the horizon, AMD today gave the first working demonstration of its potential counterpunch: a six-core Opteron processor code-named "Istanbul." Istanbul is a fairly straightforward upgrade over current 'Shanghai' Opterons: a 45nm processor with 6MB of L3 cache that fits into a Socket F-style motherboards, only with six cores rather than four. As a result, the upcoming Istanbul-based Opterons will serve as drop-in upgrades for existing Socket F systems. The chips will take advantage of the same 2P, 4P, and 8P infrastructure as today's Opterons, with HyperTransport and two channels of DDR2 memory per socket.

AMD has previously stated that Istanbul processors will become available in the second half of this year, and the firm hasn't yet provided any more specific guidance about when to expect Istanbul-based systems. However, the presence of working silicon would seem to indicate that Istanbul Opterons could be introduced much earlier in that broad "second half" time-frame than originally anticipated.

Read more here

Posted By: Mark
23 Feb 2009