It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since the Opterons were first launched. AMD put dual-core processors firmly on the Athlon-64 and Opteron roadmaps last June, and has been waiting for its 90 nanometer SOI/low-k process used in Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany, to mature before rolling them out.
At that time, AMD announced that it would deliver the dual-core Opterons in mid-2005, with dual-core Athlon-64s available in the second half of 2005. It is unclear right now if the dual-core Opteron launch on April 21 in New York City means that AMD is able to ship these chips earlier than expected.
The so-called SledgeHammer-III processors, which are expected to start shipping in mid-2005 and ramp up through the second half of that year, are the dual-core AMD chips. These third generation Opterons go by the code names of Denmark (100 Series), Italy (200 Series), and Egypt (800 Series).
On the desktop, the Toledo chip is the dual-core variant of the Athlon-64 FX chip. As far as anyone knows, these dual-core Opterons will plug right into the same sockets as single-core Opterons do today, which is a great and simple performance upgrade.
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