HP ProLiant Gen8 Servers Sport AMD Operton Processors

Semiconductor specialist Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) announced that 11 servers, including two based on the new HP (NYSE: HPQ) ProLiant Gen8 platform, would be integrating previously unannounced versions of the company’s Opteron 6200 Series processor, as well as the low-power AMD Opteron 4200 Series processor.

New models include the ProLiant DL385p, a 2U performance-based rack server designed for virtualization, database and high-performance computing workloads, and the ProLiant BL465c Gen8, a server blade with 2,000 cores per rack for virtualization, database and high-performance workloads.

The five new processors, which fall into two families, the Opteron 6200 Series and the Opteron 4200 Series, tout a 100 MHz performance over their predecessors without any increase in power. The 6200 series consists of two processors, the 6284 listed at $1,265 and the 6278 listed at $989. The 4200 series, consisting of three processors starts at $316 and rises to $455 for the eight-core 2.6GHz chip.

Last month, HP launched two Gen8 servers using the Opteron processors and will refresh the ProLiant DL585 G7 and the BL685c G7 later this year. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is also refreshing its AMD offering with the latest AMD Opteron processors in the PowerEdge C6145, C6105, R415, R515, R715, R815 and the M915.

The company continues to face challenges despite a change in top-level management — new CEO Rory Read, formerly an executive with IMB and Lenovo, joined the company last year. AMD is focusing on flexibility as opposed to what Read calls needlessly powerful performance, as businesses turn to cloud computing to handle application processing.