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AMD's September launch party could bring Barcelona

George Lucas' spread in San Francisco's Presidio district will play host to a launch party for AMD, and the company's Barcelona chip will probably be the guest of honor.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit

It looks like AMD will raise the curtain on its Barcelona server processor at George Lucas' office on September 10.

The company's PR firm sent out invitations to "the most anticipated premiere of 2007," which I would have thought was The Simpsons Movie (go see it, it's better than I thought it would be), but which for AMD is most definitely Barcelona, its long-awaited quad-core server processor.

AMD needs Barcelona to get its server division back on track. The company has been forced to cut the prices of its dual-core Opteron chips to compete with Intel's quad-core Xeon processors, eroding its profit margins when coupled with an ongoing price war.

AMD's Barcelona will probably be behind that curtain on September 10. AMD

An AMD spokesman wouldn't explicitly confirm whether the event, to be held at the Letterman Digital Arts Premier Theater at the headquarters of Lucasfilm, will see the debut of Barcelona. But AMD has said it plans to ship Barcelona "for revenue" in August, reiterating that schedule last month at its analyst meeting. That's the term generally used when a chip is shipping to server or PC companies but those companies aren't ready to launch their systems.

In other AMD news, the company issued another round of debt Thursday to pay off an outstanding loan with Morgan Stanley. The new $1.5 billion in long-term debt erases the company's obligations to Morgan Stanley in paying for the acquisition of ATI Technologies.