AMD: 6-Core Istanbul Available in June
AMD plans to ship the six-core Opteron in May to boost profitability. Intel says that its processors are still better.
AMD began its sixth anniversary of the Operton with the launch of two low-power Opteron EE chips, targeted towards cloud computing or other dense server environments. The company finished up the day with even better news: the official announcement of AMD’s six-core “Istanbul” processor, set for a May release.
For those of you thinking you’ve suddenly missed out on a few months of your life, don’t panic. Originally, the 45-nm Istanbul had been scheduled to ship later in the year, but speaking to financial analysts earlier this week, AMD’s president and chief exec, Dirk Meyer, said that the company decided to "pull in" the timetable. Yesterday afternoon AMD held a news conference to discuss its server roadmap and the company released additional details about Istanbul.
AMD claims the soon to be released processor will produce 30 percent more performance than the existing "Shanghai" quad-core processor at the same power requirements and said we can expect to see systems incorporating Istanbul in June. And just because every announcement made in the processor market these days seems to come with its own little piece of soap opera drama, the Register reports that upon hearing the announcement, Intel had this to say:
"As competitors fall behind in performance, you’ll see them throw more cores and more die size at their processors to keep up. This takes up valuable processor real estate and fab capacity. The key is not I/O, integrated memory controllers, or any one peripheral feature. The key is who has the better processor microarchitecture, and clearly that is Intel."

Didn't Intel release the first 6-core? Why is is a good idea when they do it, but when AMD does, its 'throwing' more cores at it?
While I don't dispute this currently, as it's evident that the I7 is an outstanding CPU, it wasn't that long ago when Intel was throwing around clock speed in attempt to keep up with AMD's superior architecture. Of course, maybe this statement is in response to AMD's slight reemergence into competition with Intel.
While I don't dispute this currently, as it's evident that the I7 is an outstanding CPU, it wasn't that long ago when Intel was throwing around clock speed in attempt to keep up with AMD's superior architecture. Of course, maybe this statement is in response to AMD's slight reemergence into competition with Intel.
The fact that Instanbul adds performance, does not increase the thermal profile, and is socket compatible with existing servers is in line with AMD's strategy. Given the current state of the economy, releasing a drop in compatible proc that only requires a BIOS update (if even that) is cost effective than requiring a new systems altogether to support an improved mArch, regardless if that mArch is "better" or not.
Didn't Intel release the first 6-core? Why is is a good idea when they do it, but when AMD does, its 'throwing' more cores at it?
In that market, more cores with less power req's is going to win, period.
I'll probably never buy one, but i hope other people do.
yep, tipical intel attitude. that's why i hate them and i don't buy anything that is related to them. simply i hate intel because of they veryveryveryveryveryveryveryvery poor innovation when they are in monopoly. shame on you intel.
I have a feeling intel will rush their dual die i7 procc out in 2k10 to answer this. So I doubt you'll be waiting long.
Less cores = smaller die so AMD is cutting it close competing with Intel with inferior microarchitecture.
And i am in no way a fanboy, all 3 of my computers run intel, this just had to be commented on.
Turns out AMD will do that too in 2010. According to their server roadmap refresh they will have 8-12 cores per CPU (dual die, mcm or native... they didn't say in tech report's article).
Performance wise it's gonna be a close battle but AMD's die size will be huge and probably is going to cost them a small fortune to produce it. I sure hope that Bulldozer will bring some kind of SMT into the game.