AMD this week took the covers off its quad-core desktop CPU codenamed Agena FX in Sunnyvale, California. The processor was featured in single and dual-socket configurations — the dual-socket configurations mark AMD’s first demonstration of an 8-core desktop.
Next week Monday, AMD will reveal the brand name for this Agena FX-based brand, Phenom FX. The official launch date for Agena is still undetermined.
“Quad-core, codenamed Barcelona will launch later this summer, in the July, August kind of time frame — followed by [Agena FX] on the desktop,” stated Robert Rivet, AMD executive vice president and CFO.
AMD demonstrated the power of this Phenom FX system by encoding a 1080p movie trailer into H.264 in near-realtime. The company would not reveal the clock frequencies to Global Tech News, though previous company guidance indicated Agena FX will debut at 2.6 GHz clock frequencies.
Agena FX is just the halo product for the desktop AMD K10 lineup. Agena (non-FX) will constitute the bulk of AMD’s Phenom offerings. Agena is essentially identical to Agena FX, though the non-FX processor does not support symmetric multiprocessing — Agena FX can support up to two sockets at this time. AMD will also announce its dual-core Agena bins, codenamed Kuma, shortly after Agena.
Intel is slated to launch its 45nm Penryn processor family in late 2007. “Penryn will be shipping in 2007,” stated Intel representative Nick Knupffer. “We are launching server versions of Penryn in the second half of 2007,” he added.
Intel’s desktop variants of Penryn, dubbed dual-core Wolfdale and quad-core Yorkfield, surfaced last month. The server counterparts to these chips, dubbed dual-core Hapertown and quad-core Yorkfield will suceed the existing Clovertown and Woodcrest Xeon components.
AMD’s Rivet makes one promise; we’ll see quad-core desktop components in 2007. “That’ll launch a little after the server part, it’ll be called Agena. You’ll see that in the Christmas line-up,” Rivet claimed.
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