The good news is Advanced Micro Devices has a hot product on its hands with the recently released Opteron quad-core processors. The less encouraging news is that some system builder partners say they"ve had trouble getting their hands on product in the month since AMD launched the server chips codenamed Barcelona.
When the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker debuted the "first native quad-core x86 microprocessor" Sept. 10 in six locations around the world, everybody from Tier 1 OEMs to custom system builders was anxious to see if the next few weeks would prove AMD"s claims about superior performance-per-watt, ease of exchange with dual-core Opterons and memory-friendly floating points. So far, so good, say channel partners.