Intel had been expected to release its Gulftown six-core processor sometime in early 2010. Citing desktop component companies in Asia, the site DigiTimes reported this week that Intel will announce the first Gulftown chip, the Core i7 980X, on March 16. Separately DigiTimes reported that AMD’s six-core counterpart, known as Thuban, will be launched sometime in May. AMD is expected to release three versions of the Phenom II X6 1000T series.
Six-core processors are nothing new in servers where many tasks are easily distributed across many CPU cores each running multiple threads. Intel has been shipping the six-core Xeon 7400, known as Dunnington, since 2008, and its successor, Nehalem-EX with up to eight processing cores, is due out any day now. AMD released its first six-core Opteron server chip, known as Istanbul, in June 2009. It will be followed this year by a new six-core design–two of which will be combined in a single 12-core processor known as Magny-Cours. These monsters are for high-end servers with sockets for using multiple processors, and there’s a real market for them. During AMD’s recent earnings call, CEO Dirk Meyer said six-core Opterons accounted for half the company’s server units and 60 percent of server revenue last quarter.
In the next few months, both Intel and AMD are slated to release the industry’s first six-core processors for desktop PCs. Chip makers are pitching these multi-core chips for multi-tasking and multimedia, but real-world consumer applications for six CPU cores remain limited, and for now these are likely to appeal only to PC enthusiasts with deep pockets.
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