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Intel Corp. has launched a family of quad-core processors, hoping to take back its crumbling share of the server market and win users in the trendy gaming PC segment.
The Xeon 5300 and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 chips will deliver speedy performance for the science, entertainment and business sectors, Intel President Paul Otellini said today in a statement. The Xeon 5300 runs 50% faster while using the same amount of watts as Intel’s own “Woodcrest” Xeon 5100 chip, and the QX6700 is 80% faster than its predecessor, the X6800, Intel said.
Server vendors including Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp. have already announced systems using the chips, and others including Fujitsu, Rackable and SGI will join them soon. Gaming desktop vendors that plan to use the QX6700 include Alienware Corp., Dell, Falcon Northwest, Gateway Inc., Hypersonic PC Systems, Velocity Micro Inc. and Voodoo Computers Inc.
There is nothing new about the concept of multicore chips -- vendors including IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have long used that design in their chips for high-end servers and mainframes, and Azul Systems Inc. plans to release a 48-core processor in 2007. But computers that incorporate those chips run highly specialized software, making Intel the first major vendor to bring the multicore concept to smaller computers intended to run widely used commercial software.
When running multithreaded software, quad-core processors act like four chips in a single computer, solving complicated tasks fast by breaking them into smaller pieces. Compared to single or dual-core chips, they can make a big impact in servers and workstations, although average desktop and notebook PC users won’t see a big difference unless they’re running high-end video games or editing photos. |
