AMD decided to mar Intel’s triumph today by announcing an expansion of its family of AMD Opteron 64-bit processors for servers and workstations with the new AMD Opteron processor 800 Series, for 4-way and 8-way servers and the 100 Series, for 1-way servers and workstations.

The 800 Series is scalable for up to 8-way servers and can meet customers’ long-range computing needs for enterprise infrastructure and applications by offering a simplified, non-proprietary server platform. 4P servers based on the 800 Series offer the world’s highest performance according to previously released benchmarks from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC), according to AMD.

The AMD Opteron processor 100 Series is targeted at 1P server applications, such as those used by Internet and application service providers, and intensive workstation applications such as engineering and digital content creation software.

Since AMD’s new Opteron processors feature the same relative performance numbers as AMD Opteron processors for 4-way servers, I believe that the new 840/140, 842/142 and 844/144 processors function at 1.40, 1.60 and 1.80GHz respectively. All Opteron processors incorporate 1MB of L2 cache, 128KB of L1 cache and up to three Hyper-Transport links for connecting other CPUs or I/O controllers. All Opteron processors integrate dual-channel PC2700 memory controller that can address up to 1TB of memory. The difference between Opteron processors lies in the number of integrated HyperTransport controllers, e.g. Opteron 100 series is able to work in 1P configurations and has only one HyperTransport link to communicate with system’s I/O, Opteron 200 series has two HyperTransport links, while Opteron 800 series has three HyperTransport controllers.

The table below represents core-clocks and pricing of AMD Opteron processors family:

Additionally, AMD introduced its Validated Server Program today. AMD will sell complete servers and server-barebones based on AMD Opteron processors to various resellers through the newly announced Validated Server Program. AMD is engaging Celestica to build barebones and fixed-configuration systems powered by the AMD Opteron processors 800 and 200 Series. Celestica and its partners will provide system builders with the full array of benefits that enterprise and commercial customers demand, including manufacturing, service and technical support. A number of system builders, including APPRO, Aspen Systems and RackSaver are among the first to offer servers through this program.

AMD Opteron processor Models 840, 842 and 844 and AMD Opteron processor Models 140, 142, and 144 are immediately available worldwide. Systems based on the AMD Opteron processor Models 840, 842 and 844 are available in North America through the Validated Server Program.

Mainboards for AMD Opteron processor Models 140, 142, and 144 are expected to be available worldwide in July 2003 from ASUS based on NVIDIA nForce Pro 150. Systems based on the AMD Opteron processor 100 Series are expected to be available from such vendors as Angstrom MicroSystems and Boxx Technologies in the third quarter of 2003.