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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has launched four new quad-core Opteron SE processors for two-, four- and eight-socket commodity x86 systems. The new processors are comparable to larger, more costly symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) hardware.

The Opteron is AMD’s x86 server processor line, and was the first processor to implement the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64). It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core (K8) and was intended to compete in the server market, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor.

The new quad-core AMD Opteron SE processors use registered memory and can support up to eight memory sticks per CPU. The chips are available from global OEMs and vendors, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc., Dell Inc. and IBM.

In benchmark tests benchmarks they achieved the highest SAP-SD two-tier score in eight-socket x86 servers, and quad-core AMD Opteron SE processors also achieved the highest SPECfp_rate2006 scores in both two- and four-socket x86 servers among comparable x86 processors.

According to Steve Demski, AMD’s Opteron product manager:

These Opteron offerings are for users who are most interested in maximum performance and are not concerned as much about wattage, people who may have used high-end Unix systems and mainframes and want that kind of performance at a lower price point.

Peter Ungaro, the CEO and president of Seattle-based Cray Inc. said that these processors designed for multiple-socket systems are best for applications that require a lot of memory or that perform more computing functions, rather than communications.

The new quad-core AMD Opteron processor models and prices are as follows:

• 2358 SE (with 2.4 GHz) is $873
• 2360 SE (with 2.5 GHz) is $1,165
• 8358 SE (with 2.4 GHz) is $1, 865
• 8360 SE (with 2.5 GHz) $2,149