AMD said officially it plans to deliver Istanbul, six-core, server CPU by June this year. This is certainly ahead of schedule but at the same time, it is almost a year later after Intel’s introduction of Dunnington six-core CPUs.

Nehalem servers are selling as of the last days of Q1 and AMD had to react with something. AMD works hard on its Direct Connect Architecture 2.0 that will let them connected up to 12 cores, or two six core CPUs together and this might come in the near future, but probably early next year.

In 2010 AMD plans to ship AMD Opteron 6000 series for 2P and 4P servers as it will need to fight Nehalem EX platform from Intel that should launch later this year. With Opteron 6000 series AMD plans a new G34 socket and Maranello platform with two and twelve core Magny-Cours processors.

The new AMD Opteron 4000 is also planned for 2010 and this platform will address 1P and 2P servers and these guys will have new C32 socket and will fit to San Marino platform. They will use 5 and six core Lisbon generation CPUs.

In the distant future, 2011 will being first Bulldozer based CPU with 12 and 16 cores and this baby should be based on 32nm. This new CPU will support Maranello platform that will launch in 2010. The six to eight core Valencia processor, also manufactured in the 32nm process, is also planned for shipment in 2011 for the San Marino platform.

AMD is certainly catching up with Intel, but Intel still has the performance edge, but the price-performance ratio as well as energy consumption are on AMD’s side.