AMD has released its new Opteron “Shanghai” processors based on 45-nanometer manufacturing technology months ahead of schedule.

It seems that the outfit has learned from its mistakes.  A year ago it made its financial problems a lot worse by delaying the launch of a new server and gave Intel eight months to steal market share.

Chipzilla has been selling its 45-nanometer chips for a year, but AMD claims that design tweaks in its new chips that the company says translate to 20 percent faster performance. It has better virtualization capabilities,  more than 35 percent more performance compared to “Barcelona” Opteron CPUs while having the same power envelope.

AMD said that the chip is the only x86 processor spanning 2, 4 and 8 processor servers while maintaining socket and thermal compatibility with previous generation processors. It uses 35 percent less power usage at idle “Barcelona” Opteron CPUs.

AMD has got a long way to go to climb back to profitability after losing $5.6 billion over the past eight quarters. Spokespeople from AMD will tell financial analysts more about the new chip and the company's strategy at a conference at its headquarters today.

More here.