"What we did was extend the life of the second generation platform," said Fruehe. "The last stop on the Socket F route was supposed to be Shanghai. Instead, we added Istanbul, a six-core second-generation design. The fact you get more life out of that platform, from 2006 to 2010, that's an awesome story for customers looking to minimize the churn in their datacenter." Istanbul and Sao Paulo, the 2010 processor design, will both be fully native six-core designs, an easy extension from Barcelona's quad core design. AMD was able to get there faster than had it simply fudged a quad-core design using an MCM, Fruehe argued. And it will be safer course in terms of manufacturing.