Over dinner Monday night at Zibibbo in Palo Alto, Sun Executive Vice President John Fowler predicted that he wouldn’t have trouble selling new servers equipped with the updated Opteron processor from fellow underdog AMD. Sun’s tests of Shanghai have gone swimmingly, he said, it has already begun shipping, and should appear in products in a few weeks. The new chip is designed to plug into the same equipment that used its predecessor, code-named Barcelona. Since Shanghai won’t suck more power than Barcelona and it will be priced to sell, it should be a no-brainer for customers who need to buy now. (Fowler’s pro-Shanghai feelings are echoed by several analysts, who say other server makers plan to build it into their products.)