AMD has extended its 45 nm Opteron processor line-up with new energy-efficient chips fitting within a 40W power envelope, designed for very dense data center environments such as those built for cloud computing or web serving. Available immediately, the new Opteron EE chips include the 2.1 GHz Opteron 2373 EE with 6 MB L3 Cache and the 2.3 GHz Opteron 2377 EE with the same cache size. Since they are part of the Shanghai Opteron architecture, the new EE chips have the same features as all other Shanghai Opterons and are not cut-down versions.
AMD today also launches a total of ten other Opteron CPUs, that enrich the company's server HE (55W), standard (75W), and high-performance SE (105W) power bands. These are the 2.4 GHz Opteron 2379 HE ($450), the 2.4 GHz Opteron 8379 HE ($1165), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 2381 HE ($575), the 2.5 GHz Opteron 8381 HE ($1514), the standard 2.8 GHz Opteron 2387 ($873), the 2.8 GHz Opteron 8387 ($2149), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 2389 ($989), the 2.9 GHz Opteron 8389 ($2649), and the two Opteron SE 2393 and 8393 SE with 3.1 GHz clock speeds and $1165 and $2649 price tags respectively. All ten CPUs have 6 MB of L3 cache.

Rushing in a new era of power efficiency, AMD today introduced the 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron EE processor with AMD's lowest x86 quad-core server power band. The new 40W ACP processor is designed for very dense data center environments such as those built for cloud computing, web serving, or other highly dense environments. It offers a full suite of virtualization and power management capabilities so customers do not have to compromise on feature sets in order to deploy very low power servers.

"Adding the 40 watt EE power band to the Quad-Core AMD Opteron line-up helps our customers achieve maximum value for their unique data center needs across the board," said Patrick Patla, vice president and general manager, Server Workstation Business, AMD. "The EE processor is ideal for cloud computing environments, which demand both extreme energy efficiency and a balanced system that can handle high transactional demands."

The Quad-Core AMD Opteron EE processor adds significant power efficiency improvements over the Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processor within the same platform with a 13 percent reduction in platform-level power consumption1 and up to a 14 percent reduction in processor power at idle2. At the same performance level, the new EE processor delivers up to 62 percent improved performance-per-watt over the previous generation3.

[AMD Opteron processor Model 2377 EE (SPECpower_ssj2008 overall 1088 ssj_ops/watt, 342,240 ssj_ops at 192W @ 100% target load) compared to AMD Opteron processor Model 2381 HE (SPECpower_ssj2008 overall 1037 ssj_ops/watt, 359,007 ssj_ops at 220W @ 100% target load) and AMD Opteron processor Model 2377 EE ("Shanghai") (SPECpower_ssj2008 overall 1129 ssj_ops/watt, 340,801 ssj_ops at 185W @ 100% target load) compared to AMD Opteron processor Model 2356 ("Barcelona") ( SPECpower_ssj2008 overall 697 ssj_ops/watt, 301,617 ssj_ops at 278W @ 100% target load)]

AMD also announced new, high performing processors available in the HE, standard, and SE power bands, as well as support for HyperTransport 3 technology and a new fine-tuning feature called AMD Core Select, which enables IT managers to turn off one or more cores, helping them to fine tune their hardware for their specific operating conditions and workloads.

See additional information on today's announcement in the press kit on the AMD at Work blog.