First demonstrated in November 2006 and shipped to select customers in September 2007, AMD's quad-core 'Barcelona-based' Opteron processors have been exceedingly difficult to obtain in volume. Identifying the over-exaggerated TLB issue late last year, which could cause stalls in mission-critical applications, AMD's been reticent in delivering silicon to its enterprise partners, thereby opening the door for its rival, Intel, to maximise earnings with its Xeon line of CPUs.

A couple of weeks' ago AMD announced that it was beginning to ship bug-free quad-core Phenom processors in to the channel, along with a range of triple-core models, under a revised B3 stepping.

Now, AMD is happy to announce that erratum-free B3-stepping Opterons are being shipped to the likes of HP, Sun, and Dell, some seven months after a delayed launch.

It's not surprising that AMD's fortunes continue to wane, really, in the face of dwindling sales and much-delayed product.

Let's hope it can ensure steady volume to its enterprise partners, because the much-delayed Barcelona core has damaged AMD's reputation in being able to execute to a roadmap.