eWeek heard from AMD Senior Vice President Randy Allen that the firm will ship out its first 45nm Shanghai server processors in the fourth quarter of this year. The AMD processor is designed to compete against the Intel Nehalem processor, especially in the volume two-socket server market.
"On the eve of the Intel Developer Forum, at an Aug. 15 press conference, AMD Senior Vice President Randy Allen said these 45-nm chips will ship in the fourth quarter of 2008, which means that some of AMD's OEM partners could have early systems for sale by the end of the year.
In previous statements, AMD executives have said the first 45-nm processor products would ship in the second half of 2008. Intel has not specified when the first of its Nehalem chips for servers will ship to partners. The first of these processors will appear in high-end desktops.
But it is clear that Intel will want to counter what AMD has to offer, especially in the high-volume, two-socket server market. This could mean Nehalem-based chips for two-socket servers will appear in the fourth quarter as well.
During the press conference, Allen attempted to claim that AMD would be ready with its products before Intel, especially those chips for two- and four-socket servers. While this can be seen as a classic fear, uncertainty and doubt campaign, it at least shows that AMD feels it has overcome the problems that led to delays with the quad-core, 65-nm Opteron chip in 2007.
"They [Intel] won't be factoring our 45-nanometer Shanghai product and be making shipments of that by the end of the year," Allen said. "I think some of the questions that should be asked are, What is their [Intel's] specific schedule for their two-socket offering around Nehalem and when is that going to make its way into the four-socket platforms?"
