May 7 - 6:40pm EDT   AMD on Wednesday unveiled definitive plans for 6- and 12-core Opteron processors, made with a 45nm fabrication process, which will be available most likely during 2009. TG Daily writes that the company will continue to support the Socket F (1207) platform through to its 6-core, single-die Istanbul, but will make a departure from the standard in 2010, when AMD unveils its Maranello platform. Production samples of the 45nm chips have already been made available to vendors. [full story]

April 30 - 2:00am EDT   Hoping to garner a greater mobile marketshare, AMD says that around 100 laptop designs will be based around the Puma laptop chip platform, which is scheduled to launch in June. A company spokesman told PC World that the launch will feature twice as many designs as the launch of its last mobile platform. With plans to launch Puma during the Computex trade show, the platform will offer greater power efficiency, improved graphics, and AMD's upcoming Turion X2 Ultra "Griffin" processor. The report notes that Puma also includes a chipset with integrated graphics (an ATI Radeon HD3400) and integrated wireless connectivity (via a third-party chipset) supporting 802.11a, 802.11b, ... [full story]

April 19 - 7:10pm EDT   AMD engineers this week said that the company plans on introducing new 12-core processors later this year. The first processors based on 45nm Shanghai platform are due later this year and will be nearly identical to the B3 variant of the Socket 1207 Opteron (Barcelona) shipping today, according to DailyTech. The processors will reportedly use the faster HyperTransport 3.0 for inter-CPU communication and will debut later this year as a "native six-core" Shanghai derivative, currently code-named Istanbul. That processor, the report claims, is "clearly targeted at Intel's recently announced six-core, 45nm Dunnington processor." A few months later, Shanghai and its derivatives ... [full story]

March 4 - 10:45am EST   AMD today stepped closer towards equality with Intel today by revealing the first working examples of its own 45 nanometer processors. Co-developed with IBM, the chips combine AMD's own existing quad-core technology with the smaller, more efficient chip design to improve the amount of performance without increasing power and heat as a result. The company is still hesitant to reveal full details but explains that there will be both desktop-oriented processors, codenamed "Deneb," as well as server-grade "Shanghai" chips available; these are expected to translate to both single- and dual-socket upgrades to the Phenom desktop line as well as more efficient Opteron processors ... [full story]