AMD announced that the initial production of the world’s first 16-core x86 processor, codenamed “Interlagos” (Opteron Series) began in August, with shipments now underway to customers (OEM customers). The Opteron is compatible with existing AMD Opteron 6100 Series platforms and will be available to partner systems by Q4 this year. The Opteron processors are built on 32nm process technology, utilizing either 8, 12, or 16 cores (model dependent), quad-channel DDR3 memory controller, up to 16MB of L3 cache, and four HyperTransport links.

“This is a monumental moment for the industry as this first ‘Bulldozer’ core represents the beginning of unprecedented performance scaling for x86 CPUs,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Products Group. "The flexible new ‘Bulldozer’ architecture will give Web and datacenter customers the scalability they need to handle emerging cloud and virtualization workloads.”

Read more at AMD's Server Platforms