AMD's Abu Dhabi Opteron Update Expected for Next Month

IT admins will soon be getting news about AMD's sixth-generation Opteron processor, code-named Abu Dhabi, as the manufacturer prepares its official release, which is expected to be next month.

Following the Interlagos CPU with the Bulldozer core, Abu Dhabi processor will integrate the updated Piledriver CPU that promises better performance and greater power efficiency.

Like the preceding Interlagos processor, Abu Dhabi will ship with, four, eight, twelve or 16 cores and will be compatible with the G34 socket. The desktop counterpart, Trinity, has not impressed so far.  This may be beneficial to AMD as the general performance expectations are low. However, to regain traction in the server segment, AMD needs a compelling product. CEO Rory Read mentioned during the most recent earnings conference call that Opteron processors experienced a "pause" during the second quarter and unconfirmed rumors suggested that Intel's Xeon processors, which increased shipments in Q2 due to the Sandy Bridge upgrade, took market share from AMD.

According to AMD, Piledriver will be a moderate upgrade over Bulldozer. As it is the case on the desktop, the hopes rest on the Steamroller core in 2013, which promises "greater parallelism" and may introduce directly embedded OpenCL support, as well as the future Excavator core that, according to AMD, will deliver a significant jump in processing performance.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

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