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The move is believed to represent a significant shift in the development plans of the world’s largest chipmaker and stems from its desire to build chips that are powerful without generating excessive amounts of heat, Reuters reported.

Originally planned for the launch in the second half of 2004, Xeon processors “Jayhawk” – successors of Intel Xeon “Nocona” CPUs, were then said to release in the second quarter of 2005. The Jayhawk core was expected to boast the same micro-architecture as a desktop chip code-named Tejas that would continue quantitative and qualitative boosts of NetBurst specifications. The chip were projected to have 24KB L1 cache, 16K uOps Trace Cache, 1MB L2 cache, a more efficient branch prediction mechanism, a new set of instructions known as “Tejas New Instructions” as well as improved Hyper-Threading organization and so on.

The key performance driver of all NetBurst microprocessors is their clock-speed. However, extremely high frequencies also drive power consumption and heat generation dramatically upwards. Additionally, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker ran into problems with its 90nm fabrication process that caused chips to dissipate even more heat because of the power leakage process.

In contrast, Intel Pentium M processors designed for notebooks consume considerably less energy compared to the Pentium 4, but performs nearly as fast. There are indications of dual-core Pentium M-like chips as well as 64-bit capable Pentium M chips to enter the market next year or in 2006.