AMD execs closed yesterday's Barcelona "update" meeting with some interesting comments:

- Barcelona will be the highest performing x86 that will completely blow away Clovertown (Intel's shipping quad-core Xeon chip) in every dimension. Although there's no performance comparison available yet with Intel's next-generation (45nm) quad-core chip code-named Penryn, but the upcoming Intel chip will still have the same architectural deficiencies as Clovertown. So AMD expects to retain its performance crown even after Penryn ships. This of course might change with Intel's Nehalem, which has a similar architecture than the Opteron, some time in 2008. Since then, AMD would probably ship an update of Barcelona, with a 45nm version ;

- AMD will put more emphasis on the low-power Opteron HE line versus the "standard" edition. Customers seems not mind paying a premium for the HE chips as they'll make it up in less than a year. In the past, 70% of the volume of Opteron chips was for its standard version. But going forward, this will be significantly reduced in favour of the HE part, that saw it sales more than double over the last 12 months, and the higher power/performance SE chips.

- And finally, power at the wall is what really counts at the end of the day. The average power consumption of the processor itself is substantial lower than the manufacturer's TDP (thermal design power) for the work loads customers are running anyway.