AMD's John Fruehe revealed to TechEye that Bulldozer will start sampling in the fourth quarter of this year.
John Fruehe, director of servers at AMD, said that his company is well placed to compete with Intel in the server and workstation market and is readying a number of initiatives that wll give the big chip company a run for its money.

Fruehe, said that AMD would start to sample Bulldozer cores in the fourth quarter of this year, and would continue to use the same sockets and the same power envelopes to make it easier for companies to migrate to the newer platforms.

Although Fruehe was reluctant to discuss customer wins, he said the fact that IBM, HP and Dell used AMD microprocessors meant there was clear competition in the server marketplace.

The word on the Jesuitical AMD street is that Fusion will knock the lights out of Intel's Sandy Bridge and that is endorsed by quite a few of its partners. AMD partners are often if not always Intel partners of course.

Intel's Mooly Eden told TechEye the same day that its Sandy Bridge processors will be branded as the i3, the i5 and the i7 - Eden describes these as good, better and best, although the world knows they really represent cheap, more expensive and very expensive. Expect to be just as confused when Sandy Bridge machines come out as you are now. Likewise, AMD will roll its Fusion processors into its overall "Vision" brand. Both chip companies seem to agree that us poor little consumers will be confused if we know what the actual specs are for processors.

Intel's Eden thinks that if you're buying an i9 then you are clued up enough to know what it is you are buying, so they are obviously consumers that are thick as planks and clever consumers [via techeye].