I have loked at the current Hardware Compatibility List here and can't find the latest AMD processors in it.
That's understandable because they've been out for a short time only, so that sparked the following question:

- When new versions of LINUX are published, what hardware are they tested against? For example there's been a spate of new processors announced and delivered onto the market recently by both Intel and AMD, ie dual-processor models.
Are new versions of LINUX generated to run with these new processors? Does the existence of new hardware generate a new LINUX development stream?
If so, I would like to know how to get hold of this information and understand the new (hardware-compatibility) features of each version of LINUX.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance.

Linux version is the kernel. I suggest downloading the latest stable kernel and find out what devices are supported by the kernel. You should not worry about multi-core processors because that can easily be solved by selecting SMP before compiling the kernel. Most motherboards comes with hardware that is not supported by Linux. Because of this, I suggest Abit and Epox. Sometimes I would suggest motherboards from Gigabyte. ASUS boards look like crap at the price they are being sold and they include hardware that is not supported by the Linux kernel, so I do not recommend them.

As with all multi-processor systems, I recommend buying ECC memory. You can also buy memory that includes parity or registered.