AMD confirms Barcelona quad-core shipments for August

Sunnyvale (CA) – AMD today said that it will be shipping standard and low-power versions of its quad-core server and workstation processor in August, with the product introduction being scheduled for September.

The announcement comes just one day after a report by the Inquirer that claimed that AMD will debut the processor on September 11. AMD remained unclear about the exact introduction date, but confirmed that it will begin shipping Barcelona CPUs “for revenue” in August. Servers and workstations with the new chip will be available in September, AMD said.

In contrast to the report published yesterday, AMD said that it will be shipping both standard (95 watt) as well as low-power versions (65 watt) versions of the processor in August. Clock speeds will be as high as 2.0 GHz, according to the company, with “Special Edition” (120 watt) SE processors arriving in Q4. Sources told the Inquirer that these CPUs will be available with 2.4 and 2.5 GHz.

AMD said that the new processors can provide a performance increase up to 70% on “certain database applications” and up to 40% on “certain floating point applications.” Upcoming higher frequency processors are expected “to significantly add to this performance advantage,” the company said.