AMD Barcelona processor architecture previewed

AMD has officially taken the wraps off their new series of Opteron processors today and have released their first native quad-core processor to the wild. Welcome to the jungle Barcelona.

Hot Hardware covers specific architecture details, processor model numbering, speeds and feeds of the new Barcelona core Opertons and even offer a glimpse of what's on the horizon with AMD’s Shanghai and Sandtiger cores.

"In a move reminiscent of their campaign from long ago to debunk the "megahertz myth" with processor performance rating-type model numbers, AMD is announcing a new power consumption metric called "ACP" or "Average CPU Power". AMD claims historically that they took a much more conservative approach with providing measurements for traditional TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings, opting to list worst case, maximum numbers versus Intel's average or "typical" rating guidelines. As a result, AMD's processor architecture, at least on paper, appeared significantly more power hungry than it was in practice."

Check it out at Hot Hardware. Be aware that this article only discusses the architecture, it doesn't include any benchmarks.