Having recently made its plans with the server market public, AMD demonstrated a 4-socket server featuring four 12-core, next-generation Opteron processors. That's 48 cores in all. The company has pulled its six-core Istanbul Opteron processors' launch from H2 2008 to Q2 2008, and is set to launch its Opteron 6000 series processors based on the "Magny Cours" architecture in 2010.

Processors in the series come with 8 or 12 cores. The company seems to be ready with a few of these, enough to put together a 4-socket demo system. While AMD did not run any benchmarks on the system, it managed to draw some attention due to the fact that there hasn't been so much parallelism in a 4-way server till date. On the course of its 2010 launch, the company may hold more demonstrations, perhaps with benchmarks to show how the platform compares to competing solutions from rival Intel. The "Magny Cours" processor will be the first in line for the company's G34 "Maranello" platform for AMD Opteron 6000 series processors with up to 16 cores, 4 sockets, and quad-channel memory interfaces per socket. The 16-core processor in the making is slated for 2011, is based on the Bulldozer architecture, and will be built on the 32 nm process.