Opteron is
AMD's
x86 server and workstation
processor line, and was the first processor which supported the
AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as
x86-64). It was released on April 22, 2003 with the
SledgeHammer core (K8) and was intended to compete in the
server and
workstation markets, particularly in the same segment as the Intel
Xeon processor. Processors based on the
AMD K10 microarchitecture (codenamed
Barcelona) were announced on September 10, 2007 featuring a new
quad-core configuration. The most-recently released Opteron CPUs are the
Piledriver-based Opteron 4300 and 6300 series processors, codenamed "Seoul" and "Abu Dhabi" respectively.