Phenom, part deux: AMD's B3 silicon revision

Today AMD took the wraps off the anxiously awaited "B3" revision of its Phenom processor, in a launch that will hopefully mark the beginning of a turn-around for the chipmaker's beleaguered quad-core line. To date, the quad-core Barcelona architecture from which Phenom is derived has suffered a myriad of problems. In particular, low clockspeeds marred the initial launch of AMD's quad-core Opteron server part in September, and AMD never significantly ramped availability. Then Phenom brand itself later launched in November as AMD's first desktop quad-core part, but did so at frequencies significantly lower than those AMD had been forecasting only a few weeks before the launch.