Intel dual-core chips set to ship

A few PC makers will start selling PCs containing dual-core chips from Intel on Monday, three days ahead of the debut of the dual cores.

Dell, Alienware and a few others are preparing to take orders on Monday for PCs containing these chips, an Intel spokesman said. The companies will also be able to ship these PCs to customers. Although volumes of the Extreme Edition Pentium 4, code-named Smithfield, will initially be low, Intel will ship millions of dual-core chips by the end of the year, the spokesman said.

By the end of 2006, Intel expects that 70 percent of its server chips and 85 percent of its desktop and notebook chips will be dual core, the company has said.

Intel's pre-emptive strike will likely give it the right to claim being the first to ship dual-core x86 chips. Advanced Micro Devices is slated to release dual-core Opteron chips for servers and workstations on April 21. Hewlett-Packard, however, is currently taking preorders on dual-core Opteron servers.

Intel's dual-core chips will run at 3.2GHz, slower than existing Pentium 4s, and will have an 800MHz system bus. Each core will also have 1MB of cache, less than the 2MB of cache found on a single-core chip's computing core. Still, the overall performance will be better than existing chips, Intel says, and will allow PC users to fluidly run two applications at once.

The chip will also contain HyperThreading, which allows the processing cores to take on more simultaneous tasks. A scaled-down version of Smithfield without HyperThreading will arrive later in the quarter.

AMD, though, still has a few days to spoil the party. In 2000, Intel secretly moved up the release date of its first 1GHz chip from around June to March 8. After the news broke, AMD moved the date of its first 1GHz chip up a few months to March 6.

Intel's dual-core release will come the day before the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law, the famed observation that the number of transistors on a chip can double every two years.

[Jonathan]

*yawns* Its not about who?s first out of the gate guys

If we are only talking about a matter of weeks or months between the two product launches then its not a big deal who gets credit for being first. This isn?t kindergarten for god sake. Its about who makes the best chips and considering how AMD?s chips were already partially architectured for dual cores my money is on AMD taking the speed crown once they start shipping their dual core Opterons but more importantly dual core AMD 64 FX?s or whatever they will call them. You guys ever watch NASCAR? First out of the gate isn?t always the winner and even if its neck and neck for a few laptops something usually gives. Ditto with Intel being first out of the gate. Only those who give a crap about meaningless bragging rights will care about this.

[Jonathan]

Heheh Freudian slip. That should be laps not laptops. :xD

n/t

[Jonathan]

*yawns* Its not about who?s first out of the gate guys

If we are only talking about a matter of weeks or months between the two product launches then its not a big deal who gets credit for being first. This isn?t kindergarten for god sake. Its about who makes the best chips and considering how AMD?s chips were already partially architectured for dual cores my money is on AMD taking the speed crown once they start shipping their dual core Opterons but more importantly dual core AMD 64 FX?s or whatever they will call them. You guys ever watch NASCAR? First out of the gate isn?t always the winner and even if its neck and neck for a few laptops something usually gives. Ditto with Intel being first out of the gate. Only those who give a crap about meaningless bragging rights will care about this.

[Jonathan]

Heheh Freudian slip. That should be laps not laptops. :xD

n/t

[bobby_brady]

Yawn!! Hardly any software support DC

So who cares.

[mortis9]

windows xp is threaded

the most widely used OS in the world is threaded, always has been. If windows is threaded (designed for multiple processors/cores) it doesn't matter if a single program is threaded or not. What both of these companies (intel and AMD) are touting is that you can run two seperate applications (in this case within a threaded OS) at the same time with little to no performance hits. I dunno about you, but unless I'm playing a game, I always have at least two seperate programs running simultaneously.

-my 2 cents.

[Andrew J Glina]

Ahghghghghghgh

It doesn't matter if the program support multi-threading or not. There is always at least 2 threads running at once. (On my computer right now I have 42 processes, and many of those have 10-40 threads.) Thus if you are running a non-threaded program on a DC CPU then all the other processes can run on one core and the main process can keep one core to itself thus reducing the need to stop and start it. This results in a far smoother user experience. All Windows OSes since NT support this.

[bobby_brady]

Yawn!! Hardly any software support DC

So who cares.

[mortis9]

windows xp is threaded

the most widely used OS in the world is threaded, always has been. If windows is threaded (designed for multiple processors/cores) it doesn't matter if a single program is threaded or not. What both of these companies (intel and AMD) are touting is that you can run two seperate applications (in this case within a threaded OS) at the same time with little to no performance hits. I dunno about you, but unless I'm playing a game, I always have at least two seperate programs running simultaneously.

-my 2 cents.

[Andrew J Glina]

Ahghghghghghgh

It doesn't matter if the program support multi-threading or not. There is always at least 2 threads running at once. (On my computer right now I have 42 processes, and many of those have 10-40 threads.) Thus if you are running a non-threaded program on a DC CPU then all the other processes can run on one core and the main process can keep one core to itself thus reducing the need to stop and start it. This results in a far smoother user experience. All Windows OSes since NT support this.

[KTLA_knew]

Funny, AMD started selling dual-core CPUs already today

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22553

Not that it matters who sold what days before someone else, but if someone DOES care, AMD beat Intel to the punch.

[Andrew J Glina]

Nope

They are only taking orders. I assume that they changed the story after you read it.

[KTLA_knew]

Funny, AMD started selling dual-core CPUs already today

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22553

Not that it matters who sold what days before someone else, but if someone DOES care, AMD beat Intel to the punch.

[Andrew J Glina]

Nope

They are only taking orders. I assume that they changed the story after you read it.

CNET-INTEL-Fanboys

AMD has had their Dual core processors ready for how long? this is intel not wanting to be the last. ITS CALLED A RUSH RUSH lets see whos first job. All the new P4's are is two cores slapped togther, no new technology nothing....take a look at the specs 800mhz FSB? *** is that? Just wait for the dual core opeterons on wednesday....stupid news.com employess get a nice side job from intel for posting all this bs. good job guys.

CNET-INTEL-Fanboys

AMD has had their Dual core processors ready for how long? this is intel not wanting to be the last. ITS CALLED A RUSH RUSH lets see whos first job. All the new P4's are is two cores slapped togther, no new technology nothing....take a look at the specs 800mhz FSB? *** is that? Just wait for the dual core opeterons on wednesday....stupid news.com employess get a nice side job from intel for posting all this bs. good job guys.