Some of our colleagues appeared almost ready to devour Intel's multi-core processor display. I doubt any topless bikini model would have been able to create such a commotion.

The three current multi-core projects that are expected to hit the market relatively soon are Smithfield for the desktop space (Q2); Montecito, the dual-core Itanium 2 (H2); and Yonah for the notebook market. Yonah, however, won't be available before the end of 2005, as it would not be feasible to fit a 90 nm dual-core processor into the power envelope required for the Centrino platform. Thus, it will also be available as a single-core model. At around the same time Yonah will delight enthusiast notebook users, the next generation dual-core desktop processor Presler should be available too, featuring two 2 MB L2 caches .

The Itanium 2's are Montecito/Millington for this year (90 nm process, with 4 and 2 threads respectively); Montvale for 2006 (90 nm, up to 4 threads) and Tukwila/Dimona for the future (a 65 nm part with four cores and 4 or even 8 threads.)

On the Xeon side there are Dempsey and Paxville for early 2006 at 65 and 90 nm respectively, both supporting two threads. Tulsa will follow Paxville and introduce 65 nm for the Xeon MP market. Their successor, Whitefield, is particularly interesting as Intel stated it will share the platform architecture with the Itanium 2 Tukwila at that time. Considering Intel's latest efforts in virtualization, this could be interpreted as a suggestion that the Itanium platform might even become strong enough to run the x86 system architecture in a virtual mode.

Here it is: Intel's future on display.

There was tremendous interest in Intel's multi-core products.