How do you follow up four cores?

INFORMATION NOT ONLY wants to be free, but it simply begs to be posted. No sooner does someone post a story about a new chip when you get flooded with emails about things you never knew.

Now, the Quad Opteron is cool as hell, that much is obvious, and Intel is once again doing the reactionary thing. Instead of complete panic though, they are doing the right things for the right reasons, and morale seems to be high. The engineers are back in charge, and they are executing, so far anyway.

So, if AMD can't execute on the 4-way chips, or they turn out to be more expensive than is practical, the chipmaker has a cunning plan. The plan is a 3-way Opteron.

No really, stop laughing. If you can't stifle back the giggles, the 6-way on the long term roadmaps will surely have you in tears, wetting your pants. Both are real, but are currently fallback plans. You have to wonder what you fall back to 6-way from though. Both may never see the light of day, but I want a 3-way just because it would be cool. µ