Seeing as how Intel really means business with its Nehalem-based server processors, AMD huffed, puffed and pulled some of its 45nm Opteron CPUs (codename Shanghai) out of Q1 2009 and slid them into 2008 as detailed here. These parts, as just stated by AMD, are already in mass production and will be available in servers before the end of the year.

The Socket F Shanghai processors are said to be up to 20% faster per-clock than the 65nm Barcelona Opterons and feature three times the amount of shared L3 cache of their predecessors (that's 6MB in all). The launch of the 45nm Opterons should go down in October.