AMD has announced the completion of the design, or tape-out, of its native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors represent another concrete example of the benefits from AMD's overarching strategy to introduce new technologies with minimal customer disruption for maximum value. AMD plans to deliver to customers in mid-2007 native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors that incorporate four processor cores on a single die of silicon.
AMD has been falling behind arch-rival, Intel in the quad-core race, even though the 4x4 initiative was originally an AMD project. Intel's quad-core offering, based on the popular Core 2 Duo chip, has been brought forward and is now expected to launch in Q4 2006 rather than the initially announced, mid 2007. In order to alleviate the pressure on AMD the company has announced plans to ...demonstrate our next generation microprocessor core in a native quad-core implementation before the end of the year, said Dirk Meyer, AMD's president and CEO in a conference call.
AMD also confirmed that its quad-core chip is code-named Deerhound and will be intended for socket F infrastructure and will have shared level-two cache along with a dual-channel registered DDR2 memory controller. The new chip will utilize the new K8L design, which will introduce several improvements.