AMD has long emphasized the stability and upgradeability of its Opteron server platform and now customers have a chance to try it out at a discount. Current customers running Socket F Opteron CPUs can now migrate to the latest Shanghai quad-core 45nm processors as well as the upcoming Istanbul 6-core at a 35 percent discount. That translates into a savings of $50 off 2000 series and $100 off 8000 series CPUs. AMD has kept its Opteron series of processors, including the Barcelona, Shanghai and Istanbul chips within the same socket/thermal envelope so upgrading doesn't mean throwing out the entire server. That could be a big selling point in face of the recently released Nehalem-based 5500 series of Intel Xeon processors which require a new platform and memory type.