Intel will use the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week to highlight advances in its quad-core processors scheduled to start shipping by the end of this year.

Chief executive Paul Otellini will kick off the event on Tuesday morning, and will be followed by presentations from chief technology officer Justin Rattner.

Intel gave a first public demonstration of the quad-core Kentsfield desktop processor at the previous IDF in March 2006. A server version of the chip is being developed under the Clovertown codename.

The chips bundle two dual-core processors onto a single die. As a result the cores will not be able to share a single cache which could impact performance.

The next-generation processors are expected to feature a cache that is shared between all processor cores.

Rumours also suggest that Intel could unveil an initiative to integrate a graphics process directly onto its CPUs.

Such a move would be a logical response to similar plans by AMD, which acquired graphics card manufacturer ATI earlier this year for $5.4bn.

The Intel Developer Forum will be an important opportunity for the chip giant to polish its image as a leader in the high-tech landscape.

Intel has suffered from a drop in market share and revenues in recent quarters as a result of increasing competition from AMD.

The firm is in the process of laying off about 10,500 of its employees, and has reshuffled its top management and spun off divisions that did not contribute to the company’s microprocessor business.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 11:16 pm and is filed under Linux/Open Source [t]. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.