Why a processor has been called Istanbul? There is a reason, obviously. Istanbul, the city, is housed on two continents: Europe and Asia. Istanbul, the processor, joins two worlds: a six core architecture and the socket 1207. Finally AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) has shown its new six core version of the Opteron processors, Istanbul.

The Istanbul engineering samples are already existing since last year, but only in the second half 2009 the Istanbul processor will be launched in the market. Of course Istanbul has been developed in 45 nm process technology and it looks like the existing processor Shangai 45nm, but with two additional cores. Although the two additional cores, both Istanbul and Shangai have the same power and thermal ranges. Istanbul will have 6MB L3 cache and DDR2 support, powered by HT-3 and AMD Virtualization support.

Due to the socket 1207 use, Istanbul will be compatible with the existing platforms and mother boards, but a BIOS update probably will be needed. To exploit the Istanbul potentiality the link Hypertransport 3.0 must be used. Operative frequencies and costs have not been declared yet, but it is sure that the Dunnington processor of Intel will have a dangerous rival.

Source: http://blogs.amd.com/work/archive/2009/02/24/istanbul-not-constantinople...