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Intel’s latest Core i7 chips move into desktop products

Intel Corp, the world’s biggest semiconductor maker, said computer manufacturers have begun selling desktop products equipped with its latest chip design.

Three models of the Core i7 chips, based on a design called Nehalem, will initially be available and cost US$280 to US$999 each, the Santa Clara, California-based company said in a statement on its Web site. Intel was to show machines made by 18 companies, including Dell Inc, yesterday at an event in San Francisco.

The release of the chip is part of chief executive officer Paul Otellini’s plans to protect the company’s lead over Advanced Micro Devices Inc, as slumping demand forced Intel to cut its sales forecast last week. Ottelini is seeking to avoid a repeat of 2006, when falling behind AMD in introducing new technology led to a 9 percent decline in sales.

Server versions of the Core i7 chips are scheduled to go into production this quarter and make their way into computer systems that run corporate networks and Web sites in the first three months of next year.

For the first time, Intel is combining memory and processing functions in one chip, instead of two, speeding up computing.

AMD has had a memory-controlling chip available since 2003. Its current mainstream design, called Barcelona, was about a year late, initially performed worse than expected and had an error that further slowed adoption by computer makers. Last week, AMD released an updated version that makes the chip about a third faster, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said.

Microprocessors run software in computers and use memory chips to store data while they make calculations. Intel controls 81 percent of the market for PC processors, according to researcher IDC Corp in Framingham, Massachusetts.

AMD holds all of the rest except for the less than 1 percent of Taiwan’s Via Technologies Inc (威盛電子). In servers, Intel has an 85.6 percent market share.

Intel on Nov. 12 cut its fourth-quarter sales forecast by about US$1 billion because of significantly weaker demand across its entire product line, stoking concern that the financial crisis is stifling global technology spending.
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