The world’s second largest manufacturer of x86 processors Advanced Micro Devices may have already set the date for introduction of its chips with two processing cores: the firm is projected to unveil “an important news” at the event dedicated to the second anniversary of AMD Opteron processor.

“[AMD] has told the media to expect important news at a New York event on April 21 to mark the two-year anniversary of its Opteron chip for business PCs, known as servers,” Reuters news-agency reports.

Sources close to the company indicated that the 21^st of April, 2005, is the announcement date for dual-core AMD Opteron central processing units. It remains to be seen whether the company can supply sufficient amount of such microprocessors to the market shortly after that date, as the chipmaker originally planned to release dual-core chips in the mid-year.

Last week numerous reports suggested earlier-than-expected launch of dual-core AMD Opteron.

The probable prospective plan of Advanced Micro Devices suggests that AMD will launch AMD Opteron 200- and 800-series dual-core processors at 1.80GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.20GHz already in the second quarter of 2005. In the third quarter of the year AMD is projected to release dual-core AMD Opteron 100-series chips at the clock-speeds mentioned above as well as low-power dual-core AMD Opteron products at 1.60GHz and 1.80GHz with TDP of 55W. In the fourth quarter AMD will throw in a dual-core Opteron chip at 2.0GHz with TDP of 55W and 1.60GHz dual-core processor with TDP of 30W.

Both Advanced Micro Devices and its larger rival Intel Corp. are on the forefront to introduce their x86 processors with two computing engines instead of traditional one.  But the two companies have slightly different approaches to do this. AMD plans to firstly unveil its server-aimed dual-core Opteron processors and then follow with desktop-oriented dual-core Athlon 64 chip in the second half of the year. Intel intends to commercially release its desktop Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition chips in May with dual-engine Xeon processor entering the market in early 2006.

AMD’s dual-core processors for desktops and servers are expected to be able to operate within existing Socket 939 and Socket 940 infrastructure provided that the mainboards have BIOS support for them.

Representatives for Advanced Micro Devices did not comment on the news-story for X-bit labs.