Rumor Mill:The coming year in CPUs

With CES just around the corner, it's about time that leaked information, specs and product rumors start trickling out. Perhaps "trickle" isn't the appropriate word here, as the flow of information in recent days has seemed more like a flood. Some of the juiciest info out there has pertained to the microprocessor industry and ComputerWorld has compiled the leaked specs into a 2007 road-map for both AMD and Intel. Word on the street is that Intel plans to show off three new quad-core chips, under the "Core 2 Quad" name. As with previous quad-core parts, these chips will be dual-die, so essentially, they will consist of two dual-core chips fused together. The highest-end chip will operate at 2.4 Ghz and the lowest will clock in at 1.86 Ghz. In addition, the company will continue to debut new dual-core chips for the midrange market and will also launch Pentium and Celeron-branded chipsets based on the Core architecture.

On the AMD side of the fence we can expect more chips made using a 65 nm process, including new dual-core, 64-bit Athlon chips with clock speeds ranging from 2.1 Ghz up to 2.6 Ghz. Like Intel, AMD will continue to build out most of its existing lines, including its initially disappointing Quad FX line. The real news though is the company's new architecture, code-named "Agena," which will be the world's first single-die, quad-core chipset. The first native quad-core chips will likely range in speed from 2.7 to 2.9 Ghz and will allegedly operate at a blazingly-fast bus speed of 4 Ghz.

For more on the future of processors:
- see this ComputerWorld article