AMD pumps up the Barcelona volume

JUST IN case you were going to forget, AMD will very shortly start shipping its quad core Barcelona Opteron chips to its system integrators.

This means we're all becoming victims of a spate of press releases, and as sure as eggs is eggs, here's one about what the chip vendors call "ecosystems".

The idea of a chip having an "ecosystem" raises images of a little creature bathed in rays from the sun, while calming breezes bring brief showers of rain allowing beautiful flora to blossom while long legged antelopes graze on the gentle slopes of the native quad core Barcelona.

The truth is, unfortunately, a heap more banal than this paradisical whimsy. As the following table shows:

OS or VI version	Planned availability
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SP4)	Q4 2007
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SP1)	Released
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5	Released
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0	Released
Solaris 10	Released
Windows Server 2003 SP2, R2	Released
Windows XP SP2, X64	Released
Windows Vista	Released
Windows Server 2008	Q1 2008
VM Ware infrastructure	Planned

How beautiful. µ