AMD 45 nm Opteron ShanghaiSan Francisco (CA) - AMD somewhat surprisingly confirmed in a conversation with Cnet’s Brooke Crothers that the company’s first 45 nm processor is in full production “right now”. First silicon from the production should be arriving at partners shortly, which would mean that the company can keep its promise to introduce the 45 nm Opteron, code-named “Shanghai” in Q4. A desktop version will follow with the usual delay of about 60 days.
Last year’s introduction of the 65 nm quad-core Opteron processor with Barcelona core, was not especially impressive. Initial delays were amplified through a TLB bug that sent shockwaves through the company and caused AMD to lose market share in the DP and MP server markets to Intel. Barcelona servers such as Sun’s M2 models arrived 8 months later than originally anticipated. According to an article published by Cnet, the 45 nm shrink, Shanghai is “ready to go” and will be available in product before the end of the year.
AMD claims that Shanghai will be about 20% faster than Barcelona at comparable clock speeds, it will offer three times the cache (6 MB instead of 2 MB) and support Hypertransport 3. AMD decided to roll out 45 nm with the higher-end, more profitable Opterons first and launch a 45 nm desktop CPU, code-named Deneb, with some distance. That distance is typically 60-90 days, but it appears that Deneb is prepped for a Q4 rollout as well. As it looks right now, Shanghai could be announced in October and Deneb a few weeks before Christmas.
AMD ShanghaiShanghai will maintain an “average power consumption” 55, 75 and 105 watts and, according to the company, we should expect at least one Shanghai SKU to outperform Intel’s six-core Dunnington processor. AMD’s own six-core processor, code-named Istanbul (all AMD server and desktop processor code names follow the locations of Formula 1 race tracks), is promised to be introduced as a monolithic CPU in Q4 of 2009, also with an average power consumption of 55, 75 and 105 watts.
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