AMD confirms 12 core processors after eBay outing

AMD has admitted it has begun production of its new eight and 12 core processors, following an outing of the products on an internet auction site.

The company chose to confirm the new processors in a blog post by John Fruehe, director of product marketing for Server/Workstation products, after a merchant in the US listed four of the chips for $7,000 on eBay last week.

As they had not been announced yet and were rendered useless by the lack of compatible motherboards to run them, there were no bids but it still meant AMD had to come clean about its latest project.

"I wasn't really expecting to write this blog just yet," wrote Fruehe, "I was hoping to spring that news sometime in the near future, but the internet's 'series of tubes' have been lit up and stole my thunder."

The eight and 12 core Opteron 6100 Series processors codenamed Magny-Cours are claimed by AMD to be the "most advanced x86 processors ever."

Although the blog post preferred to give an outline of which countries the chips were being manufactured in starting in Germany, over to Penang and ending up in Singapore rather than going too in-depth about the tech, Fruehe did confirm that a launch was likely before the end of the quarter.