Intel at Its Core

But according to Intel's management, the company's manufacturing prowess, particularly the one-year lead it claims to have over AMD in producing chips with new, 65-nanometer circuitry, will put it ahead in terms of technology and costs.

"Sixty-five nanometer allows us to do dual core at a cost structure of single core on 90 nanometer," said Gelsinger.

The company also said it was on track to deliver a Quad-core processor in 2007, although it wouldn't say what ratio of the company's products will be quad core in 2007.

Gelsinger acknowledged that significantly increasing quad-core shipments depended on the company's transition to chips with 45-nanometer circuitry, also scheduled to occur in 2007.

Beyond quad-core chips, however, Intel signaled that it would probably not be doubling the number of cores again in 2008.

Until the software community catches up and develops multithreaded applications specially tailored to take advantage of the new technology, there is no point in delivering mediocre products simply for the sake of putting more processors on a single die, said Rattner.

"It's really time to get on the multithreaded train," he said.

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