While Intel was releasing their 8-core Xeon processor, AMD has released an 8-core, and a whopping 12-core processor! Introductory processors for the top of the line AMD 6176 SE starts at only US$1386!

The new AMD line of processors use a huge 1944 LGA socket, and can scale up to 4 CPUs in a system. This equates to a total possible cores in a 4 way system to 48 cores.

The high end AMD Operation 6176 SE comes with 12 cores, all operating at 2.3Ghz for a total processing power of 27.6Ghz for a single CPU.

Table of CPUs, including frequency and number of cores: http://www.amd.com/us/products/server/processors/6000-series-platform/Pages/6000-series-model-number-methodology.aspx

You are probably wondering how AMD has built a 12-core processor? They’ve placed 2 6-core CPUs on the same die to bring the total core count to 12.