Intel Confirms Dual-Core Desktop 'Smithfield'

Intel today publicly confirmed the existence of 'Smithfield', the dual-core desktop processor it expects to ship mid-2005 and which started appearing on the company's internal roadmaps this past Summer.

However, the chip giant also acknowledged, again for the first time, that the chip may not be known as the Pentium 4. Even if that's the case, Smithfield may simply be two of today's P4s glued together in the same package, it emerged.

Steve Smith, VP for the Intel's Desktop Platforms Group, said Smithfield will initially be fabbed using Intel's 90nm process, but would migrate to 65nm in 2006.

By the end of that year, Intel expects over 70 per cent of its desktop CPU production to be dual-core chips, Smith said. That's an aggressive ramp, particularly since it's taken more than two years to get HT into 65 per cent of the desktops chips Intel will ship this year.