AMD has announced the immediate availability of its new 40 watt ACP six-core Opteron EE processor designed for high density data centers, such as those found in cloud computing data centers. AMD has long touted performance per watt as one of the benefits of its Opteron family of CPUs and with this latest offering, it is claiming a 31% higher performance-per-watt rating over standard quad-core Opterons.

With server densities increasing in data centers devoted to Web services and cloud computing, heat and power usage are primary concerns; utilizing the new 40 watt ACP in place of the original six-core 75 watt Opterons would enable a 40% greater density in a single rack while still remaining within the same power budget.

AMD has said the new processors will be available from system builders but didn't disclose pricing or availability on individual chips.