Welcome to the new Pentium, said chief executive Paul Otellini, at the event for media and analysts.
The focus was on the desktop lines, which are more impressive than their mobile counterparts.
While performance benchmarks for Intel’s highest-end desktop Core 2 Duo, called Extreme, are the best the industry has ever seen, most business computer users may not notice much benefit from Intel’s newest wares.
One of the demonstrations on hand was a couple of notebooks performing a large number-crunching task on Microsoft Excel, the common spreadsheet program.
The notebook loaded with Intel’s former mainstream mobile chip, Pentium M, and an earlier 915 chipset, computed the task in 32.6 seconds. The newer notebook with the Core 2 Duo and a 945 chipset did it in less than half the time, or 15.3 seconds.
Even in simple office applications you will be seeing over a 2x increase, Intel’s mobile marketing manager Roger Chang told Computer Business Review.
Among the selling points for dual-core chips are that they can better handle multitasking, but Chang’s demo showed there also are advantages with single apps.
However, Nathan Brookwood, senior analyst at research house Insight 64, said most spreadsheet users would not notice a difference in performance with the Core 2 Duo.
If they’re doing some massive models built in Excel, they might see a difference, Brookwood said. They will see a difference when doing larger analysis, maybe not using Excel, but using SAP or Database or Data Mining. That’s where they will see the difference.
Enterprises also should bear in mind that the launch of these 10 Core 2 Duo chips – five for the desktop, five for notebooks – means lower prices for Intel’s Pentium chips and, in turn, cheaper machines.
Intel plans to market Pentium to emerging markets, and as its new budget line. Also, it hopes to hold its own in the bloody pricing war with its smaller but fierce rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Intel has slashed Pentium prices even further: by as much as 60% on its older Pentium 4s, while its Pentium Ds became up to 40% cheaper. The microprocessor is the most expensive component within a computer, and users can expect these lower prices to translate into bargain-priced machines during the coming months.
Of course, for workers who need the juice for their computational-heavy tasks and for enterprises looking to cut their energy bills, the Core 2 Duo desktop range is about as good as it gets.
It also puts Intel back in the technological lead, having trailed AMD in recent years. With Core 2 Duo desktop, Intel is once again very competitive with AMD, analyst Brookwood said.
But whether Core 2 Duo will significantly add to Intel’s fortunes remains to be seen. After all, AMD is still not really a factor in the enterprise desktop and mobile market, Brookwood pointed out. Sunnyvale, California-based AMD’s client success has mostly been with consumers.
AMD is hoping Athlon 64 and Turion [for desktops and notebooks, respectively] will take it into the business market but that’s not really happening yet, Brookwood said. Core 2 Duo will make it tougher.
Intel’s newly appointed chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney said, at the event, that Intel also plans to remain more on target with its product launches, after catching a lot of criticism earlier in the decade for missing launch dates.
There is a very hard focus in the company right now on engineering execution and we intent to continue that focus for the next few years, Maloney said.
Core 2 Duo is the Intel’s first new premium brand since the Pentium, 13 years ago. Otellini noted the Pentium was the last microprocessor Intel launched at its Santa Clara, California headquarters prior to Core 2 Duo.
Core 2 Duo is not just an incremental change in terms of the capability of the machine, it’s a revolutionary link, Otellini said, during the event.
And the chip seems worthy of the fanfare. Third-party testers were recently nearly unanimous in their praise for Core 2 Duo, which promises 40% more performance with 40% lower power in desktops and 80% more performance with 35% less power usage in servers. The chip doesn’t deliver a power advantage in notebooks, but boosts performance by 20%.
We believe business computing will be more productive, and [Core 2 Duo] will enable more applications over the next few years, Maloney said. During a prepared video, an Adobe Systems engineer said Core 2 Duo would enable the software maker to do things that were not possible before – without any degradation of performance.
Already, Intel has more than 550 design wins for Core 2 Duo, the largest number for a new product in Intel’s history, according to Otellini.
What’s more, Intel will ship one million of its new desktop processors during the next seven weeks, he said. It took us one year to ship our one millionth Pentium processor, he noted.
By year’s end Intel claims to have 34 million square feet of factory capacity. That’s total capacity and not clean-room capacity. Core 2 Duo is manufactured using Intel’s 65-nanometer processor technology at 3 fabs, with a fourth to be online by year’s end. In the markets we serve, scale matters, Otellini said.
While high-end Core 2 Extreme machines, aimed at gamers and enthusiasts, are available now, systems based on Intel’s four new mainstream desktop chips will hit the retail shelves in early August. Core 2 Duo-driven notebooks will ship later in the month.
