Intel says to sell quad-core chips in November
297673
Intel Corp. INTC.O said on   Tuesday it will start selling chips with four processing cores   in November as the world's biggest microchip maker tries to   build a lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.AMD.N.
269536
Dual-core processors to be considered single chip, company says.
241673
(InfoWorld) - AMD hopes to seize a larger share of the server chip market fromÂ its rival IntelÂ on Monday when it launches the Barcelona quad-core processor. AMD has been shipping the Quad-Core AMD Opteron chip to server vendors throughout August but will use its news conference in San Francisco to publicly announce those partnerships as well as prices and benchmark test results. The company plans to launch a 1.9GHz, 68-watt Barcelona chip that focuses on power efficiency, and a 2.0GHz, 95-watt version that focuses on price/performance, said Randy Allen, AMD's corporate vice president for the server and workstation division. In the fourth quarter, the company will follow that with a 2.3 GHz, 120-watt version for high-performance applications, and higher clock speeds for the first two chips. There is a lot at stake. After launching the original Opteron chip in 2003, the company enjoyed brisk demand as customers applauded the power-efficient performance of that 130-nanometer design process chip. But Intel soon got back in the fight as both companies built smaller, faster components, shrinking their chip scales to 90nm and adding a second core. AMD has endured disappointing results lately,Â posting losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars for recent quartersÂ and focusing its attention onÂ a merger with graphics chip maker ATI. At the same time, Intel claimed bragging rights to beating AMD to quad-core architecture andÂ 65nm scale chips with its ClovertownÂ server chip.Â Intel is also preparing to launch an even smaller-featured design in the fourth quarter with its 45nm Penryn chip. AMD says Barcelona is the answer to the Intel challenge. The chip is designed with all four cores on a single die as opposed to Intel's design of joining two dual-core Woodcrest Xeon chips, Allen said. Even more important, AMD upgraded each core from 64-bit floating point performance to 128-bit and retained its Direct Connect architecture and on-chip memory controller to avoid bottlenecks in data flow, he said. Thanks to that design, the new chip will provide better performance while using the same amount of power, he said. A customer could upgrade a Hewlett-Packard ProLiant DL 385 server from AMD's dual-core to quad-core Opteron and gain faster operation with the same power and cooling demands. "Clovertown will look very anemic, especially as we bring out new frequencies. Customers really don't buy nanometers. What they care about is performance and benchmarking," said Allen. "That Direct Connect architecture is very helpful with virtualization, running multiple OSes, and other applications pulling more data than can be held in on-chip memory." Despite those advantages, AMD has missed out on a spike in market demand driven by a need to upgrade to servers capable of performing virtualization, one analyst said. "A lot of people view this as six months late or more," said Doug Freedman, managing director for research at American Technology Research. "Expectations got ahead of themselves, and some people viewed this as a potential savior for AMD after their server share topped out at the end of last year going up against Intel's dual-die quad-core. Now the feeling is this launch isn't robust enough in terms of samples shipped, design wins, and the complete food chain." To recover, AMD will have to quickly increase its production and release faster versions of Barcelona to improve the chip's availability for a range of applications, Freedman said. Intel executives say they are pressing the lead. "We are very confident, at least on the DP [dual processor] side, that we will have leadership across most of the benchmarks versus Barcelona," said Adesh Gupta, regional platform architecture manager at Intel Asia-Pacific's Server Platforms Group. "There are a small percentage of benchmarks which are floating-point based where we know that they have an advantage and that's an area which we will see them talk about a lot.... If you look at the broader spectrum of applications at the enterprise, we have a significant lead today, and we believe we will have that lead with Clovertown, and once we have Harpertown with 45nm we will extend that lead further," Gupta said. However, some vendors say there is room in the market for both chips. Each processor has its own strengths, said Dell CEO Michael Dell in remarks to financial analysts at the Citigroup Technology Conference in New York on Wednesday. Based on early tests, Dell said, a server using Barcelona chips is faster at running floating-point applications than a computer with Intel's Clovertown chips, but Clovertown is faster than Barcelona at running integer instructions. "So depending on the applications you run, or your theories of computer science, one of those servers may be the best for you. It is simply unacceptable for a company of Dell's size to have only one of those choices," Dell said.
299782
Intel Corp.  will make chips with four processing cores in November the world's biggest microchip maker said on Tuesday as it tries to maintain a lead over rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc..
621925
SAN FRANCISCO - Intel Corp. outlined its plans for a dual-core mobile processor and platform technology Wednesday, but declined to provide any details about the dual-core future of its flagship Pentium 4 desktop processor.
721878
(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. says it has rushed introduction of a new quad-core chip originally scheduled for next year to Monday to meet demand from server manufacturers for the processor. Intel is shipping the Xeon 5335 processor two months ahead of schedule as an addition to its 5300 series of quad core processors. Quad cores, which allow the microprocessor package to perform up to four functions simultaneously,Â were first introduced by Intel in November. Intel has been pushed by rivalÂ Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s plans to launch a quad-core release in 2007. The 5335 is a 2GHz processor with a 1.333GHz front-side bus and 8M bytes of Level 2 memory cache. The front side bus is the connection between the central processing unit and the memory cache. The 5335's list price is US$690 when purchased in quantities of 1,000 or more. It is positioned above the 5320 model, which features a 1.86GHz processor, a 1.066GHz front-side bus, also selling for $690, and below the 5345, with a 2.33GHz processor and a 1.333GHz front-side bus for $851. All three operate at 80 watts, compared to higher-end 5300s, which operate at 120 and 130 watts. "The OEMs wanted these new processors. They said if there's anything you could do so we could get the products early, it'd help," said Jason Waxman, director of Xeon server platforms marketing for Intel. Waxman declined to be specific about which Intel fabrication facilities globally were used to make the 5335, but said Intel has the capacity to gear up production ahead of schedule. The 5335 will be installed in server and/or workstations from companies such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Silicon Graphics Inc. and IBM Corp. "It helps deliver that improved performance and allows people to get more out of a quad-core on a dual-socket server," said David Lord, a spokesman for Dell, who added that the 5335 is available as of Monday for order in a Dell PowerEdge server. Intel still has two other quad-core processors to introduce in the first quarter, including a low volt 50-watt version, said Erica Fields, an Intel spokesperson.
159922
Intel is on track to introduce work-sharing dual-core processors across all its product lines by the end of next year. The technology is part of a strategy shift at Intel away from processor speed and toward performance.
443804
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) said Friday it would begin shipping its &quot;Barcelona&quot; quad-core Opteron processor in August, rebutting industry rumors that the chip faced manufacturing problems that could delay it until October.
203890
(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. quad-core microprocessors that work at an energy-efficient 50 watts per processor will officially be on the market starting Monday, according to the company. Each of the four cores in its new Xeon L5320 and L5310 will consume just 12.5 watts of electricity, according to Intel. The company claims the new Xeons use between 35 percent and nearly 60 percent less power than its existing 80-watt and 120-wattÂ quad-core server products. The L5320 operates at 1.86 GHz and the L5310 at 1.60 GHz. They both feature 8M bytes of on-die cache for faster memory data communication. In quantities of 1,000 units, the L5320 is priced at US$519 and the L5310 at $455. The new Xeons can be coupled with Intel's existing Bensley server platform, replacing existing dual-core or quad-core Intel processors. Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are locked in competition for dominance in the quad-core chip market, as enterprises demand more performance out of servers. Meanwhile, customers are demanding greater energy efficiency as data center electrical costs rise. AMD in February released details of its coming new quad-core chip,Â code-named Barcelona, at a technical conference in San Francisco. Barcelona, due to be released midyear, improves performance and energy efficiency over the competition and over AMD's own dual-core processor, the Opteron, which it introduced in 2003, said Brent Kerby, product marketing manager for Opteron, in an earlier IDG News Service interview. Servers based on the new Xeons are expected to be available worldwide over the next few months from such server manufacturers as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp. and others.
691668
(InfoWorld) - IntelÂ launched a dual-core notebook chip for high-end users on Monday, continuing an effort toÂ defend its shareÂ of the fast-growing notebook PC market against Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD). Intel is selling the new Core 2 Extreme X7800 processor to PC vendors now, and says it will reach store shelves within two weeks, boosting performance for the hard-core gamers and digital artists who now use notebooks powered by Intel's Core Duo T2600. The company encouraged vendors to push even faster performance by opening the chip's speed protection locks, allowing them to overclock the processor for even faster operation. Some video game fans seek top performance by running chips beyond their rated speed limits on desktop PCsÂ such asÂ Dell's XPS 720 series. The practice is less common on notebook PCs, which are usually optimized for the best battery endurance. By concentrating on notebooks, Intel is aiming at the sweet spot of the PC market. Vendors have seen sparse growth in desktop PC shipments in recent years, increasing by only single-digit percentages in 2005, 2006, and forecasts for 2007. But demand for notebooks in soaring, with global notebook shipments showing increases of 35.9 percent in 2005, 28.4 percent in 2006, and an estimated 25.3 percent in 2007, according to the analyst firm iSuppli. In May, Intel made another effort to push sales of its mobile chips byÂ launching its Santa Rosa bundleÂ of mobile processors and chipsets, an upgrade to its popular Centrino platform.Â AMD quickly respondedÂ by announcing later that month that it would use a new mobile processor called "Griffin" as the basis of a collection of processors and chip sets code-named Puma, expected to reach markets in the middle of 2008. Intel now hopes to regain the initiative by expanding its Core 2 Extreme brand from high-end desktops to high-end notebooks. It is selling the 2.6GHz Core 2 Extreme X7800 notebook chip for $851. Also on Monday, Intel announced five new desktop chips, led by the quad-core, 3.0GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850, intended for game developers, and the 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6700. Intel is selling those two chips for $999 and $530, respectively, priced in 1,000-unit quantities. Intel's new dual-core chips are all in the Core 2 Duo family, including the 3.0GHz E6850, for $266; the 2.66GHz E6750, for $183; and the 2.33GHz E6550, for $163. The company is shipping all the chips now, and expects vendors to bring them to markets in two weeks.
620478
Intel plans to launch its Core 2 Quad processor in January, targeting high-end desktop PCs in an effort to stay ahead of rival AMD.
199568
At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco yesterday, Intel President Paul Otellini provided further details of the chip giantâs plans to bring multicore processors to servers and desktop PCs, starting with a dual-core server chip in the second half
18931
With the market for quad-core chips still in its infancy, Advance Micro Devices has an alternative that might help bridge the gap: tri-core chips. As a bonus, this strategy can't easily be imitated by Intel, AMD executives say.
274867
(InfoWorld) - Following theÂ launch of Intel's quad-core Xeon 7300 processorÂ on Wednesday, the company's efforts are now focused on preparations for the rollout of its first Penryn chips later this year. And there are signs the company is planning an early 2008 release of its Silverthorne chip for ultramobile PCs and handheld devices. Intel confirmed plans to release a server version of Penryn before the end of this year, but the company is releasing little information about its plans for mobile and desktop versions of the chip. Penryn will offer better performance than Intel's current processors, and the company is counting on them to hold off any gains rival Advanced Micro DevicesÂ makes with theÂ release of its quad-core Barcelona chipsÂ next week. "So far what we've said is that we intend to ship a broad family of 45-nanometer processors by the end of the year," said Nick Jacobs, an Intel spokesman in Singapore, referring to the technology used to produce theÂ Penryn chips. Penryn is the code name given to the 45-nanometer "shrink" of Intel's current chip designs, which are now produced using a 65-nanometer process. These numbers refer to the average size of the features that can be created on a silicon chip, and smaller is considered better for several reasons, including cost. Making the size of features smaller allows chip makers to reduce the chip's overall size, which reduces unit manufacturing costs since more chips can be made on a single silicon wafer. Chips made using a more advanced manufacturing process can also consume less power and run faster than those made using an older process. In the case of Penryn, Intel will take advantage of the ability to shrink the features of a chip to cram more memory cells into its processors, increasing the on-chip cache size and further boosting performance. The first Penryn processors are widely expected to come in November, but Intel has yet to announce exactly when the launch will happen. In addition to the release of Penryn chips for servers later this year, Intel is expected to release the Yorkfield and Wolfdale desktop variants of Penryn in early 2008, with some speculating that high-end versions of these desktop chips could arrive before the end of this year. Intel is holding off on the release of mobile Penryn chips until early next year, when the company plans to update its Centrino platform for notebooks. Dunnington, a chip designed for servers with four or more processors, will round out Intel's Penryn lineup. Set for release in late 2008, Dunnington will replace the Xeon 7300 chips that Intel announced Wednesday. Intel is also readying Silverthorne for launch next year. Produced using a 45-nanometer process, the dual-core Silverthorne chip is very small, allowing 2,500 chips to be produced on a single wafer to help keep costs low. The chip is designed for low power consumption and comes bundled with a single-chip chipset called Poulsbo. Intel originally planned to release Silverthorne during the second half of next year. But the company moved the chip's release date to the "first half of 2008." That timeframe could mean anything from January until the end of June, but one Intel source said the chip is likely to come sooner rather than later within that timeframe. Asked about an early 2008 release date for Silverthorne, Jacobs would only confirm the chip's planned release is on track for the first half of the year. Â
473345
Intel's new marketing slogan: Multiply! The chipmaker is set to release a big ad campaign to promote dual-core processors.
403491
Intel is expected to kick off its semi-annual developer forum Tuesday by demonstrating a new dual-core processor, something rival AMD showed off last week.
297751
(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. says it has rushed introduction of a new quad-core chip originally scheduled for next year to Monday to meet demand from server manufacturers for the processor. Intel is shipping the Xeon 5335 processor two months ahead of schedule as an addition to its 5300 series of quad core processors. Quad cores, which allow the microprocessor package to perform up to four functions simultaneously,Â were first introduced by Intel in November. Intel has been pushed by rivalÂ Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s plans to launch a quad-core release in 2007. The 5335 is a 2GHz processor with a 1.333GHz front-side bus and 8M bytes of Level 2 memory cache. The front side bus is the connection between the central processing unit and the memory cache. The 5335's list price is US$690 when purchased in quantities of 1,000 or more. It is positioned above the 5320 model, which features a 1.86GHz processor, a 1.066GHz front-side bus, selling for $455, and below the 5345, with a 2.33GHz processor and a 1.333GHz front-side bus for $851. All three operate at 80 watts, compared to higher-end 5300s, which operate at 120 watts. "The OEMs wanted these new processors. They said if there's anything you could do so we could get the products early, it'd help," said Jason Waxman, director of Xeon server platforms marketing for Intel. Waxman declined to be specific about which Intel fabrication facilities globally were used to make the 5335, but said Intel has the capacity to gear up production ahead of schedule. The 5335 will be installed in server and/or workstations from companies such as Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Silicon Graphics Inc. and IBM Corp. "It helps deliver that improved performance and allows people to get more out of a quad-core on a dual-socket server," said David Lord, a spokesman for Dell, who added that the 5335 is available as of Monday for order in a Dell PowerEdge server. Intel still has two other quad-core processors to introduce in the first quarter, including a low volt 50-watt version, said Erica Fields, an Intel spokesperson. Â  This story has been corrected since its original release to reflect accurate prices.