AMD launches its Interlagos Bulldozer chips

CHIP DESIGNER AMD has announced that it has begun shipping its Bulldozer architecture chips to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

The firm started making its first Bulldozer chips codenamed 'Interlagos' last month and is now shipping to OEM customers. Many of the first batches of the Interlagos chip, which AMD said is the world's first 16 core x86 processor, will be used in supercomputers.

Rick Bergman, SVP and general manager of AMD Products Group said, "This is a monumental moment for the industry as this first 'Bulldozer' core represents the beginning of unprecedented performance scaling for x86 CPUs."

The Interlagos chip is compatible with existing AMD Opteron 6100 Series architecture and will be available in systems in the fourth quarter of this year.

Bergman added, "The flexible new 'Bulldozer' architecture will give Web and datacenter customers the scalability they need to handle emerging cloud and virtualisation workloads."

We first saw AMD's next generation processor in action at this year's International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg. At the time the company gave us a launch target of the third quarter, which it has hit.

This in theory puts pressure on Intel, but AMD's rival told The INQUIRER back in June that it would be producing Sandy Bridge Xeons by the end of the year. µ