Going green
AMD has launched five new 45nm quad-core Opteron HE processors, whose distinctive feature is that they are lower power - 55 watts as opposed to 75 watts for the full power versions.
The press release Doesn't specify model numbers and a there are already quite a few 55W Opteron HE CPUs in the market. However, it does say these processors operate at speeds ranging from 2.1 to 2.3 GHz.
A look at AMD's own list of Operons reveals a number of HE versions running at 55W but none with a clock speed of above 2 GHz, so it looks like the innovation is in processor frequency.
Patrick Patla, GM of the server and workstation Business at AMD said: "The new Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE series processor offers unrivaled performance-per-watt and cost-efficiencies for a wide range of configurations without a potential front-side bus bottleneck.
"In the second quarter AMD plans to take energy-efficiency to the next level in introducing even lower ACP processors for the unique demands of cloud computing environments."
Before we conclude that AMD is entirely given over to green products, however, there's also the news that it has launched two new Opteron SE processors, which have a clock speed of 2.8 GHz but use 105 watts in so doing.
