Catching up with rival Advanced Micro Devices, Intel said on Tuesday it will ship a desktop PC microprocessor that can handle significantly larger chunks of data than most of today’s chips.
The new 600-series Pentium 4s, which will be available later this month, are the first Intel desktop chips that support a technology called 64-bit memory addressability. Previously, Pentium 4 chips processed data in 32-bit chunks.
The new technology will result in improved performance, particularly when a computer is handling vast amounts of data such as a large database program or video editing application.
In September 2003, AMD launched its Athlon 64 line of processors and widely touted the fact that it was leading, rather than following, the world’s largest chipmaker. But Intel maintained that the PC market wasn’t ready and pointed to a dearth of software that can exploit the extra memory.
In fact, Microsoft has yet to release an official 64-bit version of Windows XP for Intel and AMD chips, though it’s expected to later this year.
The new Pentiums also will include more built-in memory, support for a power-management technology previously found in mobile computer chips and a security feature that helps block some worms and other malware.
The chips will be primarily targeted at business users, said Rob Crooke, Vice President of Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group. Its release is part of an effort by Intel to tailor chips for specific uses.
On Tuesday, Intel also announced that it will be upgrading its Xeon line of processors for servers and workstations, enabling 64-bit support in chips designed for four-processor systems. Last year, it launched other 64-bit Xeons.
The company also offers its 64-bit Itanium chip for high-end servers. Released in 2001, it uses an entirely different architecture and requires software to be rewritten for the best performance. The 64-bit Pentiums and Xeons are fully backward compatible with 32-bit software.
Besides the 64-bit announcements, Intel also planning to release Pentium and Xeon chips with two computing engines instead of just one. On Monday, the company said it expects the first dual-core chips will be available in the second quarter of this year.
AMD also has big plans for dual-core chips. So do IBM, Toshiba and Sony, which announced technical details of their Cell microprocessor on Monday. Separately, IBM and Sun Microsystems already offer multicore chips. – Sapa-AP