After months of talking up the benefits of single chips with two computing engines instead of one, Intel Corp said computer makers will start shipping PCs with its "dual-core" microprocessors today.
The chips will boost performance of PCs running multiple programs at once or a single program that's been optimized to work on a dual-core system. But depending how the PC is used, some users might see a performance decrease over the fastest single-core processors.
PC makers such as Alienware Corp will begin selling machines equipped with so-called dual-core chips, Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson said. Dell Inc, the world's largest personal-computer maker, plans to unveil machines based on the new Pentium Extreme Edition 840 "soon," Dell spokesman Liem Nguyen said.
Intel, the world's largest computer-chip maker, declined to release prices, but today's single-core Extreme Edition chips run about US$1,000 each -- nearly US$400 more than the fastest Pentium 4.
The announcement is the culmination of an acrimonious race between Intel and archrival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Both promised to be the first to launch dual-core chips, and it seems Intel is beating AMD by just a few days.
AMD says its microprocessors have been designed from the ground up with dual-core capabilities in mind. Intel, AMD says, glued together two chips in a rush to catch up.
Intel has "made a series of apparent hurried, reactionary moves to rush their product to market before ours, hoping to claim a hollow victory," according to a statement attributed to Marty Seyer, general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit.
AMD Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz, said on April 13 that his company will begin selling a similar chip for servers April 21.
Dual-core chips are designed to make computers faster by enabling the processor to work on more than one program simultaneously. Current PC chips must execute instructions from software one at a time and can only run multiple applications by jumping between instructions from different programs.
Intel's Anderson said the new chips provide "performance that is right where we believe people want it most -- easily handling multiple tasks at once, such as playing games, downloading music and running virus protection, all at the same time."
"We'll leave the debates over design elegance to others," Anderson said in an e-mail Friday. "At the end of the day, what matters is the platform value that is being delivered to the marketplace for the people who use the technology."
Anderson said Intel has long planned to launch its chip next week, which coincides with the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law, company co-founder Gordon Moore's famous prediction that the number of transistors and other components crammed on an integrated circuit would double ever two years. That prediction set the pace of innovation for the semiconductor industry.
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