AMD’s most impatiently awaited announcement is so far planned for September 10. This is when the new Barcelona processors – the first quad-core CPUs on K10 micro-architecture positioned for the server segment – are scheduled to come out. According to Digitimes, there will be two models launched on that day: Opteron 2348 running at 1.9GHz and Opteron 2350 running at 2.0GHz. Opteron 2354 processor working at 2.2GHz will be announced in October, and even faster Barcelona models are expected to come out later in Q4.

The first Barcelona models with 1.9GHz and 2.0GHz working frequencies will not be too expensive, they will be priced at $320 and $390 respectively. Note that, you can buy a dual-core Opteron 2218 with 2.6GHz clock speed for about the same money today.

Quad-core AMD Opteron processors code-named Barcelona are based on the company’s next-generation micro-architecture and will be produced using 65nm process technology. Among the highlights of AMD’s new chips the manufacturer lists shared 2MB L3 cache, 128-bit floating point units (FPU), SSE4A instructions, support for dual-channel DDR2 memory and other innovations.

The clock speeds, approximate price point, and TDP of the upcoming Opteron processors on K10 micro-architecture are given below:

• Opteron 2348, 1.9GHz, 95W - $320;
• Opteron 2350, 2.0GHz, 95W - $390;
• Opteron 2352, 2.1GHz, 95W - $450;
• Opteron 2354, 2.2GHz, 95W - $610;
• Opteron 2356, 2.3GHz, 95W - $795;
• Opteron 2358, 2.4GHz, 95W - $1180; 
• Opteron 2360, 2.5GHz, 120W - ?;
• Opteron 8348, 1.9GHz, 95W - $790;
• Opteron 8350, 2.0GHz, 95W - $1025;
• Opteron 8352, 2.1GHz, 95W  - ?;
• Opteron 8354, 2.2GHz, 95W  - $1190;
• Opteron 8356, 2.3GHz, 95W - $1550.