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The event comes 11 days afterwards AMD's new CEO Rory Read slashed 1,400 jobs from the chipmaker's global operations, saying that AMD needed to get leaner and to focus more on low-power chips, cloud computing and emerging markets.

Luckily enough, the new server chip, which has been three years in design and development, accomplishes all three goals. It has an industry-first 16 processing cores and boasts a variety of features to save power. Nevertheless the chip can as well boost its performance when the workload demands. And AMD says Interlagos costs less than comparable models made by arch-rival Intel Corp. The chip is as well designed for servers that can be packed densely into data centers, which could make it popular for high-performance computing clusters and for cloud computing installations.

And in short, Interlagos is being pitched with a focus on China and other emerging markets. Those markets are more value-conscious and more willing to buy servers based on a chip not made by Intel, which dominates the server business. Two big server-makers, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., will take part in the launch event. So will a few Chinese companies, including Dawning Computer Co. Ltd. and SuperCloud.

Very big focus for AMD

"China is a very big focus for AMD," said John Fruehe, director of server marketing for AMD. "As we look at how we grow the server business, there is a huge possibility in China. There is a lot of government investment in cloud computing and some cloud-oriented businesses are growing up.

"One thing that drives the market in China is value. Being able to get the most for your money is very important there."

Analysts tend to agree that emerging markets could be promising for AMD, which has seen its server business struggle in recent years. AMD gained credibility for several years afterwards 2003, when its early Opteron server chips were regarded as more advanced in design than Intel parts. But at the time AMD stumbled badly with the introduction of the Barcelona chip in 2007, when so then-publicized design flaws delayed commercial shipments of the chip for several months. Together, Intel was introducing a series of then-received rival chips and AMD lost ground and credibility partly of the server market. AMD's market share in the latest quarter fell to just in accordance with 5 percent.

AMD hopes that Interlagos reverses that trend. The new chip is based on the long-awaited Bulldozer design for processing cores, which are expected to do considerably more computing work with less energy expenditure than previous versions.

The desire for OEMs to have an alternative to Intel

"One dynamic that works for AMD is the desire for OEMs to have an alternative to Intel. They are afraid of a world where there is only Intel. If have no leverage, they think Intel can do anything they want. That scares vendors. AMD only has to hit par to get business from these guys. They want to give them something."

AMD has already found one ready buyer for the new chip — the supercomputer market. The company shipped about 25,000 Interlagos chips to the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, for its new supercomputer, Titan. Fruehe said he believes more than one high-performance computer using Interlagos should rank high on the biennial supercomputing top 500 list, which comes out today.

The server chip market

High-performance computing makes up 10 to 12 percent of the server chip market, Fruehe said. Success in that market can bode so then for business cloud-computing applications, where there can be a massive scaling of computing power in a single data center. And China, he noted, is in the process of making a big shift to cloud research.