At the Intel Developer Forum trade show in San Francisco last week, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said the company will ship quad-core
processors for servers and gaming PCs, beginning in November.
Adding extra cores to a chip allows the PC to split up heavy workloads. Intel’s new quad-core gaming chip, called the Core
2 Extreme, will deliver a performance boost of 70 percent compared with Intel’s current dual-core gaming processor, company
representatives said.
Thirteen vendors have already announced plans to sell PCs for the high-end enthusiast market based on the Core 2 Extreme,
including Dell and its Alienware division, Gateway; Velocity Micro; and Voodoo. Intel will follow that chip with the Core
2 Quad, a four-core CPU for mainstream desktops that will ship first quarter 2007, Otellini said.
On the server side, Intel will call its new quad-core chip the Xeon 5300, and will follow its November launch with a more
efficient, 50-watt version in first quarter 2007.
The new products could provide a crucial boost for Intel, which has lost market share to rival AMD and has failed to meet
earnings targets, prompting Otellini to sell several corporate divisions and lay off 10,000 people in recent weeks. Market
share for AMD’s dual-core Opteron server chip continues to grow, and many experts consider it to be a more power-efficient
choice for datacenters than Intel’s offerings. Reaching customers first with quad-core chips could help Intel change its reputation.
“Perception doesn’t change overnight, but what you’re seeing is Intel rebuilding itself, rebuilding its product line, and
laying a foundation for the future,” Otellini said. Industry analyst Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64 agreed. “Intel’s going
to have some really solid performance advantages over the next few months,” he said
Intel also has continued to shrink the process technology it uses to build its chips. Intel will start producing 45nm process
chips by the second half of 2007 at a $3 billion fab in Oregon, then will add another plant in Arizona that year, and a third
in Israel by the first half of 2008, Otellini said.
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