Advanced Micro Devices has started to sell its AMD Opteron processors for dual-processor and multi-processor servers clocked at 2.80GHz. The firm surprisingly did not made any official announcements about the move and it is unclear whether any of its partners have adopted the new chips.

The new central processing units are AMD Opteron 254 and 854 that function at 2.80GHz, sport 1MB of L2 cache, dual-channel PC3200 memory controller and so on. The chips are compatible with Socket 940 infrastructure and theoretically can be installed into any system designed for AMD Opteron processors.

The new central processing units recently quietly emerged in AMD’s price-list as well as at some stores over the Internet. Nevertheless, AMD’s largest server partners – Sun and HP – currently do not sell the new AMD Opteron processors at 2.80GHz clock-speed.

AMD Opteron 254 and 854 processors are produced using 90nm process technology with silicon-on-insulator. The chips have thermal design power of 92.6W, AMD’s quick reference guide states.

Advanced Micro Devices recently shifted focus of its server microprocessors to multi-core projects, which may mean that the new single-core AMD Opteron chips are the last high-speed single-core central processing units for enterprise-class machines.

AMD Opteron processors models 254 and 854 cost $851 and $1514 in 1000-unit quantities respectively.