BEIJING, April 22-- Advanced Micro Devices Inc., for the second time in past two years, will take the lead in transforming the industry-standard, mainstream computing market with the release of the first dual-core x86-based microprocessors for servers.

The Opteron 800 series processor is designed for four- to eight-way servers, while the 200 series chips are targeted at two-way servers and workstations. For desktop users, AMD is offering the Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor.

These products arrive on the heels of Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 840 processor, introduced on Monday, marking Intel's first foray into dual-core technology.

Intel's dual-core chips, which debuted Monday in the US, are designed for desktops. Server versions of its Xeon server chips won't come out until early 2006.

Two years ago today, AMD released its first Opteron processor, which enabled it over the ensuing 24 months to launch a transformation of the 32-bit x86 market to 64-bit computing, dragging along a reluctant Intel. With Thursday's availability of the first dual-core Opteron processors, Intel again finds itself months behind the innovation curve, although Paul Otellini, Intel's president and chief operating officer expressed little concern when he announced record first-quarter revenues and profits last week."The numbers speak for themselves," Otellini told analysts."People pay a premium for Intel products, and we're outselling our competition by a large measure."

Pat Patla, director of server and workstation marketing for AMD, says that with the dual-core Opteron offerings, AMD is repeating a successful strategy."We brought 64-bit computing to the masses, and that's exactly what we are going to bring to dual core,"0 Patla says."We're enabling the next level of performance without users having to change their power infrastructure."

Overall, a dual-core Opteron will outperform a single-core version running at the same speed by 40 percent to 70 percent, depending on the application, said Ben Williams, vice president of the commercial business at AMD told ZDNet Australia's sister site CNET News.com.

Meanwhile, the desktop chips will come out around June and will be called the Athlon 64 X2, Williams said. AMD will target these at regular users, who will use the two cores to run multiple tasks at once. Unlike Intel, AMD will not bring the dual-core concept to its Athlon 64 FX line of gamer chips yet because most games aren't threaded for dual-core operations.

"The FX will outperform the dual cores in the gaming environment, but the dual cores will outperform the FX in multitasking," Williams said.

The cheapest dual-core server chips will cost as much as the high-end single-core models. The dual-core Opteron 265, for instance, will sell for US$851 in 1,000-unit quantities, the same as the 252, the most expensive member of the single-core 200 Opteron family.

Similar to most of the server chips, the dual-core desktops will cost more than their single-core counterparts. The chips will be priced between the FX chips(which sell for US$837) and standard Athlon 64s(which top out at US$64), Williams said.

The Athlon 64 line may also finally be able to live up to its full potential soon. Microsoft will release the 64-bit version of Windows at WinHEC next month. A 64-bit chip can juggle far more memory than standard 32-bit chips. Various Linux distributions have been adapted to 64-bit computing for some time.

Top-tier vendors Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems all have announced plans to introduce new servers and workstations based on the dual-core Opteron processors. But questions remain whether this latest technological advance by AMD will enable it to finally achieve large-scale success.

(Agencies)