Advanced Micro Devices is expected to show off a dual-core processor for desktops at its headquarters Wednesday, but is keeping tight lipped about the details.
The chip, code-named Toledo, will feature two separate Athlon 64 processing cores on the same piece of silicon. It will start appearing in PCs in the second half of 2005, said Theresa DeOnis, desktop brand manager for AMD. Putting two cores on a chip will allow a computer to perform two tasks at once, she said, or run specially tweaked applications faster. Windows XP Professional will be the operating system of choice for many dual-core desktops, as it is already threaded to run two processors.