Unless you're living under a quad-core rock, you know that Monday, Sept. 10, marks the big day when AMD will formally announce Barcelona. Don't want to wait? Then listen to my 15-minute discussion with Randy Allen, VP of AMD's server and workstation division, who'll give you the scoop on the processor.Allen drops two minor bombshells. The first, as I've previously reported, is that Barcelona will rapidly ramp up its clock speed, rising quickly from 2.0 GHz at launch to 2.3 GHz by the end of the year.

Go to around the seven-minute mark in the podcast, and you'll hear Allen expound on the clock-speed question. "[There's] a lot of anticipation around this product introduction, because it is the most advanced X86 server processor that's ever been designed, developed, and sold. What we expect to deliver to the market," he says. "We've made public statements that we'll be introducing frequencies of 2.3 GHz and above, so that we'll be able to quickly improve the performance of Barcelona."

The second news nugget is the stuff about how Barcelona has made its way out of AMD's Dresden fabs ahead of Monday's formal launch. In the podcase, Allen adds some perspective to basic information, which I previously reported on my blog.

Says Allen: "We're shipping the processor today. We expect most of the server OEMs to be bringing products to market in 4Q, not on the launch date. But what we have is over 50 platforms that utilize the socket 1207. And Barcelona is socket-compatible. It drops right into those platforms. So that makes for a very low barrier for [the OEMs] to take their existing platforms and to enhance them with this quad-core processor."

Listen to the podcast by clicking here. [The talk was taped on Aug. 24; technical difficulties prevented my posting it earlier.]

Allen also offers these highlights:

About the next step in chip-fabrication technology: "We'll be introducing the 45-nm version of our server processors in the second half of '08."

Barcelona boasts numerous improvements aimed at boosting instruction throughput. (Click picture to enlarge.)

P.S. Also check out " Inside AMD's Phenom And Opteron Quad-Core Architectures" and "Quad-Core Processor Buyer's Guide 2007", and (finally) Who Needs A Quad-Core PC?.