Intel ups ante with two-chip November quad-cores

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 06:42

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AMD has described the new Intel quad-core technology as two dual-cores stiched together as opposed to the AMD quad-core chip which will have four processing cores on a single die with four separate caches all interconnected. and operating as a quad-core processor.

AMD claims that advantages in performance and power consumption from its "true" quad-core approach are obvious and at least some analysts agree.

However, yesterday at the Intel Developer Conference Otellini hit back like a wounded prize fighter at suggestions that Intel's two-chip quad-core was not the real deal, saying that the market doesn't care about packaging.

There is a view that while Intel's initial two-chip quad-core solution will deliver significant performance advantages over anything that AMD will have until mid-2007. AMD will leapfrog back into the lead again when it releases its single chip quad-core.

However, as 2006 has already demonstrated nine months is an eternity in processor development and AMD will be hard pressed to defend the gains it has made against Intel during a time when Intel has once again gained the upper hand in the performance stakes.