I was going to just add a post to a previous thread of mine, but then remembered that it was too old and has since then become locked.

So here's the article

AMD has begun limited revenue shipments of its upcoming 12-core "Magny-Cours" Opterons. The new chips will be officially released before the end of the quarter, according to an AMD blog. Magny-Cours will compete with other high-end processors from Intel, IBM and Sun.

Advanced Micro Devices has begun limited shipments of its upcoming "Magny-Cours" Opterons, and will launch the high-end processors by the end of the current quarter.

In a blog post Feb. 22, John Fruehe, director of product marketing for server/workstation products at AMD, said that production of the eight- and 12-core Opteron 6100 chips has begun at the Dresden, Germany, facilities of Globalfoundries, the manufacturer that was created after being spun off from AMD in 2009.

Production of the processors began in January, and systems makers started receiving production parts this month, Fruehe said in the blog.

"We have had a few select end customer opportunities that have been fulfilled, but it is nothing we can talk about publicly," he wrote.

Fruehe's blog comes amid reports that some Magny-Cours chips have found their way onto eBay, though the chips and servers powered by them reportedly would not have become available until the day of the chip's official launch.

Fruehe admitted the reports prompted him to write the blog.

"As a matter of fact, we were not planning to talk about any of this just yet, but earlier this week, someone tried to offer products that they claimed were 'Magny-Cours' processors for sale on the web," he wrote. "Obviously the message about 12-core goodness with incredible value is making it out into the market, so much so that somebody wanted to jump on the bandwagon."

Magny-Cours is AMD's entry into what promises to be a hotly contested competition in the high-end server space. IBM on Feb. 8 released its first servers powered by Power7 chips. That same day, Intel announced its long-awaited next-generation Itanium processor, dubbed "Tukwila."

Both Intel and AMD are pushing their x86 processors into high-end environments. AMD will do that with Magny-Cours this year and "Interlagos," which will features 12 to 16 cores, in 2011. The new Opterons are aimed at high-end two-socket servers and those systems with four sockets.

For its part, Intel is preparing to launch the eight-core "Nehalem EX" Xeon chip for systems with four or more sockets.

AMD officials say the capability of Magny-Cours to run in both enterprise-class two-socket as well as four sockets is a key differentiator, giving users of AMD-based systems a single platform for both.

Magny-Cours also will come with more energy-efficiency and virtualization features as well as three memory channels, one more than is found on Intel's Xeon 5500 Series chips for two-socket systems.

This should be an interesting year for processors, as well as GPUs.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

first, look for quad cores to drop in price. nice for the average user.

Second, these are enterprise level chips. these arent meant for the bleeding edge type user. I assume that those will be forthcoming as well

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I can already see hardcore crunchers (and probably some very rich gamers) getting the motherboards to match these chips... imagine what kind of work you could crunch with four of these puppies paired with a Tesla or two... CPDN in a minute, SETI as fast as the server can send the work!

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2.5GHz X2 32bit AMD Athlon|2GB RAM|WinXP Pro|2243.7GB total 3 SATA,2 IDE
1.6GHz Celeron|512mB RAM|WinXP Home|80gB SATA
3.1GHz X3 64bit AMD Athlon|4GBs 1066 RAM|ATI 4650 GPU

I don't think these chips are generally available to consumers. They are dedicated server and enterprise level chips only. The motherboard itself will probably cost at least $1000.
Just like Nehalem-EX.

Also, I don't know if you see a play on words like I do, but... "Magny-Cours" sounds and looks a bit like "Many Cores"? :)

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- Luke.

I don't think these chips are generally available to consumers. They are dedicated server and enterprise level chips only. The motherboard itself will probably cost at least $1000.
Just like Nehalem-EX.

Also, I don't know if you see a play on words like I do, but... "Magny-Cours" sounds and looks a bit like "Many Cores"? :)

That is amusing.. I hadn't thought/seen it that way.

I'm pretty sure these chips will at some point be available to consumers, however, they will be very pricey, and here's the other thing.. I know for sure a 2p system will not be on an e-ATX board--it just won't fit.

The "Maranello" socket/platform was supposed to have 12 DIMM slots per CPU socket. I imagine a 2p board will be rather large, and a 4p.. I just can't even imagine.

I do think at some point, we will be able to purchase this stuff, just not right now, since it hasn't officially been released to the market. This first shipment is for the OEMs that paid big money, and are in their prototyping phase to figure out what kind of system to build and how much they might sell it for.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Most powerfull one is 2,2 GHz, 12 cores, 1080 EURO(1K pieces bought). Gulftown, 6 cores + HT, lower price, reaches 4 GHz with box cooler(friend of mine tested it yesterday, engineering sample 980X, EST - 999 USD, roughly 750 EURO), will eat them, and it doesn't need special motherboard. Many of X58 MoBos support Gulftown.
I do not own any AMDs already, but if they still perform weak with SETI as those X2s I had, it makes them even more worthless for casual crunching.
Just my opinion.
Here they are:
* Opteron 6128 (8 cores), 1,5 GHz, 12 MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 253,49 EURO
* Opteron 6134 (8 cores), 1,7 GHz, 12 MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 489 EURO
* Opteron 6136 (8 cores), 2,4 GHz, 12 MB MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 692 EURO
* Opteron 6168 (12 cores), 1,9 GHz, 12 MB MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 692 EURO
* Opteron 6172 (12 cores), 2,1 GHz, 12 MB MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 917 EURO
* Opteron 6174 (12 cores), 2,2 GHz, 12 MB MB L3, TDP of 115 W, 1078 EURO

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for those prices I could build 2 really nice quad core boxes

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

So one 12-core Opteron might be able to go head-to-head with a four-core Core i7?

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With 6 core, Gulftown(3,33 GHz default). But still assumption does not include AMD's CPUs performance with SETI. It may worsen things for AMD by far.
Simple calculation, if we assume they are even, clock for clock, and HT gives u 50% more performance, they have equal rating - 26+ GHz.

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