With its higher performance and reduced power, Intel Core microarchitecture is the intel road map they are banking the farm on. While one can spend day's reading the spin on their roadmap since hearing that Intel plans to give a price break which suggests their intent to give 4 cores for the price or two.

Intel plans future quad-core models that consume less power. In the first quarter of 2007, Intel will release mainstream Kentsfield chips, called Core 2 Quad, that consume 105 watts while a gaming version known as "Core 2 Extreme" will soon be shipped to OEMs.

Hoping to push ahead of rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp. will bring its quad-core chips to market in a new line of Hewlett-Packard Co. workstations to be introduced on Nov. 13. HP has sent out invitations to the event but did not offer any specifics on exact models and prices. The computers will probably use Intel's planned Xeon 5300 chip, and are designed to run high-end applications like seismic analysis and visualization software from Autodesk Inc.

The launch would allow Intel to bring quad-core processors to market before AMD, a crucial win in a year when Intel has made as many headlines for its layoffs and missed earnings targets as for its technology.

AMD plans to release its own quad-core chips in the middle of 2007 and claims that its monolithic design is superior to Intel's plan, which essentially glues two dual-cores chips together. But without having any hardware to test, analysts are divided on whether this detail will significantly affect the chips' performance.

AMD claims to have the advantage in quad-core by using a design superior to Intel's, "which essentially glues two dual-core chips together," he wrote. Without hardware to run tests on and make comparisons, however, it's impossible to know which design performs better.

While we are hearing plenty of information about Kentsfield release in November it will be pricey. The first intel quad-core is specifically aimed at gamers and content creators, which not only indicates a very limited availability but also the usual high tray price ($1000) of the Extreme processor series. Intel will follow up with a quad-core mainstream processor in Q1 of next year. The "Core 2 Quad" will support Intel's revenue of the Core 2 processor series on the higher-end mainstream.