AMD unveils Shanghai server chip

Beleaguered Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has unveiled its next Opteron quad-core processor--code named Shanghai--yesterday. The 45nm Shanghai was released ahead of time, while the ill-fated Barcelona processor, announced in September 2007, was delayed by a bug that pushed volume shipments until April 2008. AMD says Shanghai performs 35 percent better than Barcelona, as well as a decreased power requirement of 35 percent. In addition, the processor comes with enhancements that are touted to benefit customers implementing virtualization. Engineers have managed to reduce the time it takes for the CPU to shift control from one virtual machine to another by 25 percent.

Customers who had the chance to try out Shanghai on their machines gave it rave reviews, though Gartner analyst Martin Reynold remains unconvinced that Shanghai will steal the market. He notes that Shanghai's likely customers will be those shopping for a good price/performance ratio.

To read more about this story:
- check out this BusinessWeek article
- check out this Computerworld article

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