Intel has spoken up on its Quad-core plans at a conference in New York earlier this week and spoke of Intel’s Quad-core “Clovertown” processor, which will be released at the start of 2007. Clovertown will use two dual-core circuits but in the same package, separating it from Kentsfield, which will be two separate dual-core circuits on the same processor. It also spoke of the use of an integrated memory controller with processors, something AMD has been very successful with through its AMD64 architecture. Intel admitted that an integrated memory controller could have its advantages with some applications but said that this technology is not a priority. According to Intel it’s more important to release the first quad-core processors before AMD instead.
It is expected to be one or two quarters ahead of AMD when it comes to quad-core, something it gladly pointed out. It also announced that Intel most likely will integrate the memory controller into its processors sooner or later. But it has bigger plans than that, it is namely looking at the possibility of integrating a graphics circuit into the processor which sounds like an interesting future. Intel did not want to share any details about when we should be able to expect processors with an integrated memory controller or graphics circuit but we hope to hear more about this soon.
