News came out yesterday that Intel has dropped the price of 7 processors by up to 31%.  The price cut applies to E8500 (31%), E2700 (15%), Q6600 (14%), E8400 (11%) and 3 Xeon class chips (11%).  Price cuts are normally introduced for one or two reasons: to be more competitive and to reduce excess inventory holding.  For sure, Intel competes with AMD all the time and this is the first reason.  Secondly, Intel has announced to introduce the Bloomfield CPU shortly and would want to reduce the inventory of some items that may be affected by the release of Bloomfield.  The information below attempts to provide an overview of the main technical features of Intel processors.  * Please note that Xeon 5400 Series is the only processor in the table below that is Dual Socket capable.

Intel Bloomfield CPU is based on a new architecture.  We predict that Intel will release Bloomfield in October 2008.

• It does not have a front side bus like the above processors
• It has a memory controller integrated within the CPU
• It has a modular bus that connects to the North Bridge and other processors on the motherboard
• The supporting chipset is Tylersburg or X58 for desktop

The AMD processor line up has been stable for a while.  The table below shows Opteron 2300 series (Barcelona) only for Dual Socket and skips the Opteron 8000 series for Quad Sockets.  AMD processors have integrated memory controller, do not use Front Side Bus but Hyper Transport serial links for connection to the North Bridge and other processors on the motherboard.

AMD will upgrade Opteron from the Barcelona core to Shanghai in 2009.  Shanghai will have 6MB L3 cache and keeps the pin number and other Barcelona features.

-EDITOR