AMD: Say Hello to Barcelona

When Intel released Core architecture, it massively impacted AMD due to the important performance gap it created with the CPU offer from the Texan founder. AMD at that time had no CPU ready to be launched to fire back to Core Duo and Core 2 Duo mobile, desktop and Core Xeon server CPUs, so it strongly decreased prices of its mobile and desktop CPU.
It took 18 months to AMD following the first Core CPU introduction to release the first native Quad Core CPU, known as Barcelona, and aiming to compete with Core architecture-based Xeon.
Quad Core Xeon are in fact two Dual Core Xeon on the same die, communicating via the system bus, the same way that two Dual Core CPUs installed on two independent sockets on the same motherboard. To that extend, Barcelona is more advanced with its interconnected Quad Core technology. But does it translate performance wise?
Anandtech could test a Barcelona clocked at 2.0GHz, and compared results with those obtained from a Quad Core Xeon Clovertown. In almost all test, the Barcelona was faster than the Xeon at the same clockspeed, indicating already that latest AMD will lead the race of performance/watt for couple of month, till Penryn Xeon or next generation Xeon arrive.
The Barcelona will be initially launched with a top clockspeed around 2.0GHz, before evolving towards 2.5GHz frequency, and will mostly invade server market, before finding its way to desktops and workstation hardware models. The Barcelona should be cheaper than the corresponding Intel CPU, so Intel could fire back by offering price discount on its current Quad Core Xeon to maintain the pressure on the Texan founder, the time required to release the next Xeon generation. For sure customers will benefit of having AMD back and track and bringing competitive CPU to the market, it will force Intel to innovate and release top notch CPUs