Good to hear something other than delays, bugs and losses from AMD. The current 4-core Opteron is outclassed by the latest Nehalem-based Xeons, even in the historically strong FP performance metrics. So the 6-core Opteron is arriving just in time...
AMD will never seriously threaten Intel. Intel can throw a billion dollars at anything AMD does and come out with a better solution. Some facts...<p>Intel's research budget last year: $5.7 billion<p>AMD's Revenue last year: $5.81 billion<p>Intel needs AMD to exist so that they can avoid anti-trust lawsuits. If AMD fails then Intel will face a lot of legal problems.<p>Disclosure: My dad works for Intel.
"It’s worth noting that Intel’s hyperthreading technology allows it to treat one core as two, via software. Hence, Intel says its eight-core chip does the work of a 16-core chip."<p>That's a little optimistic on Intel's part.