RETAIL

BOSTON--At the Embedded Systems Conference, AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced that it plans to offer customers mid- and low-power AMD Opteron(TM) processors in the first half of 2004. The mid- and low-power AMD Opteron processors, to be available at 55 watts and 30 watts, are designed to provide customers with a wide variety of solutions, extending into the AMD Opteron 100-, 200-, and 800- series product lines. "AMD is once again entering new markets and offering additional choice to our customers," said Marty Seyer, vice president and general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit. "AMD is already a leader in providing low power, high performance processors to the market. With mid- and low-power AMD Opteron processors, AMD will now enable an enterprise to employ a common infrastructure based on AMD64 technology at all levels of its computing environment - from high-performance clusters to blade servers." Enterprise computing systems that require power conservation, such as blade servers and storage devices, are gaining in popularity due to their scalability, ease of management and cost efficiency. In addition, mid- and low-power processors are a requirement for many server systems housed in large computing centers where power consumption and heat affects operating costs. The AMD Opteron processor's high memory throughput and I/O bandwidth are ideal for products that must quickly move and manipulate large datasets, while consuming minimum power. "The blade server market is expected to experience tremendous growth in the next few years," said Mark Melenovsky, Director, Server Research with IDC. "The benefits to be recognized by enterprise IT departments in terms of lower total cost of ownership and ease of management will mean more and more companies will turn to blade servers for their data center solutions." This growing customer base will now be able to recognize the new level of computing available with AMD64 technology.