Posted on Wednesday, July 04 2007 @ 1:30 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Sources close to Intel claim that the firm is planning to ship its 45nm quad-core processors in the fourth quarter of this year, with availability slated for the first quarter of 2008. X-bit Labs
reports:
Even though Intel’s code-named Yorkfield processors with four processing engines are still due to be introduced in Q1 2008, Intel Corp. will begin to ship them in Q4 2007 in order to allow computer makers to stockpile a significant amount of such chips before their official launch. Intel’s dual-core code-named Wolfdale chips will still begin to ship in Q1 2008, according to sources.
Such roll-out pattern for Intel is very common: it began to ship Dothan, Yonah, Cedar Mill/Presler as well as some other chips in the recent years about a quarter ahead of formal introduction. Moreover, even though 65nm-based code-named Presler processors (Pentium D 900-series) were launched in Q1 2006, Intel still released a number of such chips late in 2005 and allowed the press to review them.
Quad-core code-named Yorkfield processors are projected to feature up to 12MB of L2 cache, 1333MHz processor system bus and clock-speeds in the range of 3.33GHz.
Intel announced in March that the new-generation chips produced using 45nm process technology and featuring Core 2 micro-architecture will have greater instructions per clock (IPC) execution, which means that they will be faster and more efficient even at the same clock-speeds with the current generation chips. Besides, the new chips will be able to run at higher clock-speeds compared to today’s Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad products.
