Although it's set to debut around a year after Intel's Core 2 Duo that swiped the performance crown, Barcelona is AMD's best chance at remaining competitive.
Barcelona's window of opportunity is slim, depending mostly on how Intel's transition to 45nm goes. Publicly Intel has stated that its architectural update to Core 2, codenamed Penryn, will begin shipping by the end of 2007. However, current roadmaps show availability at sometime in 2008 with no word on when significant quantities will be available. Should Intel take longer than expected with the move to its 45nm Penryn core, Barcelona's mid-2007 launch on servers and Q3 '07 launch for desktops may come at a relatively quiet time for Intel.
AMD Barcelona architecture discussed
Posted on Saturday, March 03 2007 @ 21:37 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck