Advanced Micro Devices started the day by announcing the "world’s most advanced x86 processor ever designed and manufactured and the first native x86 quad-core microprocessor." Designed for data-centers the quad core AMD Opteron chip (previously codenamed Barcelona) dramatically enhances performance-per-watt ratio. The firm claims its the most power efficient server CPU they've ever produced. The processor is able to save huge amount of power due to AMD PowerNow!, Independent Dynamic Core, Dual Dynamic Power Management, and CoolCore Technology. The latter one reduces energy consumption by turning off unused parts of the processor.

In addition AMD has introduced a new metric called the Average CPU Power (ACP) that indicates power consumption more precisely. The company says it represents processor power usage, including cores, integrated memory controller, and HyperTransport technology links, while running a suite of typical and relevant commercially useful high utilization workloads to be more indicative of the power consumption that end-users can expect.

The company has decided to introduce Phenom processor (for desktop market) from December with the same technologies thats bundled in Opteron. While the systems from different companies with Opteron processor will be available from this month.

Source