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Published on August 10, 2007

AMD announced that leading x86 operating system (OS) and virtual infrastructure (VI) vendors are embracing support for AMD's native Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, code-named "Barcelona."  Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VMware are optimizing their operating systems, virtual infrastructures and supporting tools and middleware to take full advantage of the increased efficiencies, performance and decreased power consumption enabled by AMD quad-core technology.

By working closely with leading operating system and virtual infrastructure vendors, AMD is providing customers with the ability to choose the environment that is best suited to their applications demands. 

Development efforts by operating system and virtual infrastructure vendors are primarily focused on leveraging enhanced power management, virtualization and multi-core features of the upcoming Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. Since its introduction, the AMD Opteron processor has become a platform of choice on the road maps of operating systems from Windows, Linux and Solaris as well as that of VMware Infrastructure.

Microsoft Windows Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Sun Microsystems' Solaris Operating System and VMware Infrastructure are expected to offer versions of the operating systems and virtual infrastructures that work out-of-the-box with "Barcelona," the industry's first native x86 quad-core processors, providing improved performance across a range of applications.

"Barcelona's" enhancements, which will offer increased application performance within the same platform and power envelope as existing dual-core processors, include native quad-core capabilities, Enhanced AMD PowerNow! technology and Rapid Virtualization Indexing (formally "Nested Paging"), which is a new feature of AMD Virtualization technology.

In addition to the out-of-the-box compatibility with "Barcelona," versions of vendor operating systems and virtual infrastructures currently under development are expected to include additional optimizations that specifically enable applications to exploit AMD64 quad-core capabilities.