AMD says that it has redefined the server market with the release of its Opteron 6000 series server platform. The company's gauntlet (of the throwing down variety) consists of eight and 12 core x86 processors giving twice the performance of the previous generation, significant improvements in memory bandwidth, better power management and attractive price points.

The Opteron 6000 series benefits from an enhanced integrated memory controller capable of supporting four channels of DDR3 memory, an increase in DIMM capacity of 50 percent over the previous generation and those eight and 12 core processors offer an 88 percent increase in integer performance and 119 percent increase in floating point performance over previous AMD offerings. The company also claims that its solution outperforms its nearest competitor but costs significantly less.

Improved power management is also a key feature of the Magny-Cours platform, with new additions to the range of features including Advanced Platform Management Link remote monitoring and CoolSpeed technology which automatically reduces p-states when a pre-determined temperature is reached. AMD's Director of Product Marketing John Fruehe said on his blog: "The fact that we have doubled cores and stayed in the same power/thermal range compared to our previous generation is a testament to our power efficiency."

The final tick in AMD's plus column is the "more cores and more memory for less money" pricing. Since the same processors can be used for both two and four processor systems, the company has effectively done away with the need to pay a premium for scaling up. "As a matter of fact, a customer will probably find that a 4P server, with 32 total cores (4 x 8-core) based on our new pricing, will not only perform better than our competitor’s highest end 2P system, but it will also do it for a lower price," claimed Fruehe.

Acer, Hewlett-Packard and Dell are amongst the first to confirm that new systems featuring the Opteron 6000 series platform are to be introduced in the near future. More detailed information is available on the product page.