A 12-core chip was released today by advanced Micro Devices today, which doubled the number of cores in the previous generation chip in its Opteron line. By taking advantage of the performance gains delivered by a chip with a dozen cores, software licensing costs may be reduced.

AMD shared that the performance gains of its new Opteron, code-named "Magny-Cours", is about two times its six-core chip.

Users will compare its price, performance and energy use with that of Intel's x86 chip upgrades. Some other reasons for choosing a 12-core chip will include the impact on overall data centre space needs as well as software licensing costs.

Matt Lavallee, the Director of technology at MLS Property Information Network Inc., opines that if he upgrades from his current quad-core chips to the 12-core Opteron chip, it will let him cut the number of servers and his software licensing costs.

He said, “While the 12-core chip costs a little more than an eight-core chip, it's "nowhere near as much as a SQL server costs”.

Based on the number of cores, core speeds and power, AMD has 10 pricing options, which the users may opt for.

The AMD officials mentioned that they have not just increased the chip count, but also upgraded their direct connect architecture to improve the CPU-to-CPU chip communication speeds by 33%.