Two new processors have been rolled out by Advanced Micro Devices - both of them low-power, high-performance chips headed for servers from Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Rackable Systems!

The new offerings mark an expansion of AMD's line of 45-nanometer Opteron processors, which hit the market in November, under the codename 'Shanghai.'

The 45-nanometer Opteron processors are being updated with five new energy-saving models - the low-power 45-nanometer quad-core AMD Opteron HE processors - to operate within 55-watt ACP, or Average CPU Power. The other offering is the high-performance, 45-nm Opteron processors running at 2.8GHz, to work within the 105-watt ACP thermal envelope.

AMD said that while the low-power HE processors, would cater to a segment of the server market "that must maximize performance during peak hours while managing the energy costs during idle and low-utilization hours," the high-performance SE processors are targeted at customers with "the most performance-intensive datacenter workloads."

The five Opteron HE processors include the Opteron 8376 HE; the Opteron 8374 HE; the Opteron 2376 HE; the Opteron 2374 HE; and the Opteron 2372. The starting prices for these processors, calculated in 1,000-unit shipments, stands at $1,514 for the Opteron 8376 HE models, and $316 for the Opteron 2372 HE microprocessors.

The two SE processors are the Opteron 8386 SE, and the Opteron 2386 SE. The cost-price of the former chips, when bought in 1,000-unit quantities is $2,649; while that of the latter is $1,165.