Barcelona finally channel bound

WITH THE BIG SERVER FIRMS daring to base products lines on AMD's quad-core Barcelona, for weeks now "healthy" examples are beginning to bob up in the channel, as the chip maker hopes to put one headache behind it.

"Erratum 298 (TLB erratum) has been fixed," the company proclaimed. "The silicon for B3 Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors is healthy."

AMD told the INQUIRER it has already whisked off early samples to all of its "strategic OEM partners". Early feedback from testing and validation was extremely positive, it claimed.

"Initial shipments of updated Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors (B3) to both OEMs and channel partners are on track for late March and platforms from our OEM and system builder partners are expected to be available starting in Q208," the spokesAMD's email said.

Customer HP told Cnet it expects to start shipping systems "in early Q2."

We dare barely add that we've been here - or very close to it - before. µ