Intel ends Pentium era with new Core 2 line

Core 2 Duo processors will bring dual-core capabilities to desktops and laptops this week

Intel will this week officially launch its Conroe and Merom dual-core chips, for desktop and laptop systems respectively. The chip giant also said it plans to bring forward the release of its first quad-core processors to the end of 2006 instead of the first half of 2007.

The Conroe and Merom parts, both officially called Core 2 Duo, complete the roll-out of Intel’s next-generation dual-core microarchitecture, following the launch of the Xeon 5100 Woodcrest server chip in June.

Conroe is available immediately, and Merom is set to ship in August. The releases also signal the beginning of the end of the Pentium brand, which will be cut in price to target lower-priced PCs, Intel said.

Earlier this month, Intel disclosed clock speeds and pricing for its E6700, E6600, E6400 and E6300 Conroe chips. Similar details for Merom have yet to be disclosed, but it is expected to ship in three versions with 4MB of L2 cache, clocked at up to 2.33GHz.

The dual-core chips will soon be followed by quad-core designs featuring four processors on a single chip. Intel last week said it was bringing forward the release of its Kentsfield and Clovertown chips to the end of 2006. Kentsfield will be aimed at desktop systems, while Clovertown will join Intel’s Xeon server line-up.

Meanwhile, rival processor vendor AMD expects to release a quad-core Opteron in the first half of 2007. The chip will use the same socket as the current dual-core part. “It’s the same power envelope and the same thermal characteristics,” said Richard Baker, AMD’s marketing manager.

IBM is next Tuesday expected to respond to Intel’s Montecito dual-core Itanium with the release of new Power5+ processors and systems. The IT giant will detail plans for a refresh of its Power5+ processor – using four cores and very large memory caches – for Series p Unix servers.

And last week, Sun revealed that it has successfully booted a server running the Niagara II next-generation UltraSparc processor. Niagara II runs eight cores, each capable of processing eight threads. Commercial availability is scheduled for next year.