Intel is ready to attain leadership in performance and energy efficiency over rival Advanced Micro Devices during the coming months, with processors that continue to be built differently than those of other companies, according to an official with the chip-making giant.
Speaking at a conference June 13 in New York hosted by analyst firm Bear Stearns Security, Dileep Bhandarkar, architect at large for Intel, in Santa Clara, said that when Intel’s quad-core “Clovertown” is released in the first half of 2007, it will be a single package of two dual-core chips, and that the chips will not have the memory controller integrated into the chip.
Intel over the past couple of years has seen AMD make inroads into its dominant market share, mostly by beating Intel to the market with 64-bit features and dual-core capabilities on its Opteron processors.
Opteron processors also continue to be more energy-efficient than Intel’s Xeon chips, though Bhandarkar said that gap is closing with the upcoming introduction of such dual-core chips as “Woodcrest,” which will launch June 26. He said Woodcrest will give users an 80 percent performance improvement over current Xeon processors while lowering power consumption by 35 percent.
