Intel Corp. Started “Thinking” of Quad-Core Chips for Notebooks
 

At the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, Taiwan the company’s executive said that Intel has already started to think about quad-core processors for mobile computers. The claim once again proves that Intel’s vision of future processors remains to be consistent with the current strategy and includes multi-core chips.

“The company has already started thinking about mobile processors with four and more cores,” said vice president of Intel’s mobility group and general manager of the mobile platforms group Shmuel Eden.

Mr. Eden did not outline any possible peculiarities of such chips, like power consumption or functionality. Still, mobile processors with four cores may potentially bring advanced multi-threading to mobile users, as Intel’s forthcoming dual-core mobile processors are expected to disable their second core when operating at battery power.

Earlier this year Intel’s president and COO Paul Otellini said quad-core microprocessors will be available sometimes in 2007. The initial plans include quad-core products for servers, but eventually the technology may be applied to clients, which include both desktop and mobile computers, as well. Intel’s arch-rival AMD also indicated similar plans for related timeframe.

More than one processing engine per central processing units allows CPU to handle more operations at the same time, which is important nowadays, as both client and server computers tend to run multiple software applications at the same time.

According to Intel’s estimations, by the end of 2007 all of the server processors the company will ship at that time will be either dual- or multi-core products, whereas in the performance desktop and performance notebook segments shipments of dual-core chips will account for more than 90%.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/...020095852.html