The big press
event touting
the official
release of its
first quad-core
processor won't
take place until
next Monday. But
that doesn't
mean AMD's
long-waited
Barcelona server
chips are locked
up in the
company's
Dresden fabs.
"I can tell you
that Barcelona
is shipping for
revenue today,"
AMD spokesman
Phil Hughes
confirmed in an
email.
What this means
is that the
processor is
already in the
hands of the
Tier 1 OEMs who
will begin
shipping
Barcelona-based
quad-core
servers real
soon. That list
includes all
four of the big
boys: Sun
Microsystems,
IBM,
Hewlett-Packard,
and Dell, all of
whom currently
offer Opteron
servers.
(Barcelona is a
code name; the
chips will be
the quad-core
members of the
Opteron family.)
In point of
fact, it's not
surprising nor
is it big news
that Barcelona
is "shipping" in
advance of its
formal launch
next Monday. Of
course it's got
to be "shipping"
if AMD's OEM
partners are to
begin selling
Barcelona
servers at
launch. In any
case, formal
launches these
days are pretty
much a
non-event.
The news about
Barcelona has
been out and
about for some
time now. All
Monday's press
conference will
do is give AMD a
big bump in
coverage. Call
it the Zen of
the news cycle.
Press events are
an excuse for
reporters too
lazy to dig up
their own
stories to write
what they're
spoon fed by
some company.
(I'm not calling
out AMD here;
everyone does
it.) At the same
time, Web sites
who don't cover
such things lose
out on traffic
everyone else is
presumably
getting.
As I've
previously
written, the
biggest recent
news about
Barcelona is
that it'll
launch at
2.0-GHz but will
ramp quickly (by
year's end) to
2.3 GHz. (Read
the details
here.)