No, quad-core chips aren't heating up literally--though they do get quite hot if your case isn't properly ventilated. Rather, the quad-core CPU market is heating up, thanks to price cuts and a number of different parts on the market. Intel has sold 10 million quad-core chips since their introduction in late 2006, and AMD is expected to announce that it has sold 1 million of its quad-core parts shortly. Sure, quad-core CPUs still represent only about 3 percent of the overall market, but with more and more businesses turning to x86 servers, you had better believe that figure is going to grow. “I don’t think anyone had imagined how popular the low-cost quad core server parts were going to be at the time,” said Dean McCarron, Founder and Principal at Mercury Research.
For more on the quad-core market:
- see this ZDnet article [1]
Links:
[1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/processors/?p=169