Intel Announces Dual-Core Production, 945 and 955 Chipsets

Santa Clara (CA) - Intel today said it has completed initial production runs of dual-core processors, which will be introduced during the second quarter of this year. The company also announced the 955X chipset for the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition and the 945 chipset for the mainstream dual-core processor "Smithfield". On the opening day of the ISSCC 2005 conference Intel surprised with several announcements providing more details for the upcoming launch of the firm's dual-core processors. While the first run of production is in time for a broad commercial launch in the second quarter of this year, the company said that the launch of the technology would not only include the desktop dual-cores "Smithfield" which are likely to carry a 8xx sequence number, but also an "Extreme Edition" of the processor. [HardFeed]