About Intel's dual-core processors

THE DUAL CORE WARS are heating up, but you won't see it until next summer. The fight was picked by AMD, the capabilities have been in the K8 core since before day one. Intel is in the position of being reactionary, and starting with an 'if they can do it, so can we' project. Make that projects, there are two of note, one reactionary, the other will be the one to watch.

Let's start out with AMD, it is the one which has the best thought out strategy. The use of HT as an interconnect has paid massive dividends for AMD with the K8 core, and that will extend to the dual core products. Every K8 has a HT switch on chip, it is necessary for the CPU to function in a glueless SMP environment.