Addressing the number one challenge for data center managers, AMD today announced widespread availability of five new low-power 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processors. At 55-watt ACP, these new highly efficient processors help meet the industry's rising demand for low power, cost-saving data center technology. Now available in eight server systems from HP, the new processors can help customers immediately recognize power savings and increased virtualization performance. Rackable Systems will also have Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processor-based servers available immediately and additional systems from global OEMs including Dell, Sun, and other solution providers are expected later this quarter.

The 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE processor, with speeds ranging from 2.1 to 2.3 GHz, is designed to address a vast segment of the business computing market that must maximize performance during peak hours while managing the energy costs during idle and low-utilization hours. Server platforms based on these new AMD Opteron HE processors can offer up to 20% lower idle power compared to similarly configured competing systems, helping cut energy costs without compromising any of the processor features of the standard power options.

"In the current economic environment, datacenter managers are under more pressure than ever to reduce costs without compromising the latest features or performance," said Patrick Patla, general manager, Server and Workstation Business, AMD. "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."

Additionally, two new 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron SE processors (2.8 GHz) are now available for customers with the most performance-intensive datacenter workloads. At the 105-watt ACP thermal envelope, these new processors are also immediately available in three new systems from HP as well as from other AMD technology partners.

New Power Management Innovations and Performance Numbers
Significant new power management capabilities are now enabled with all 45nm Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. Details on these new additional power saving features, as well as information on the performance data available for both new processor categories is available at AMD@work.