INTEL"S NEXT PROCESSOR, codenamed Prescott, will come with Hyperthreading 2 according to Juergen Thiel, the company"s European Union Managing Director. He also attempted to squash recurring rumours of Intel taking on AMD"s x86-64 technology. No details have appeared on Hyperthreading 2 though some have speculated it might involve more than two "virtual" processors on a single chip. Thiel let the information slip to the German site tecChannel. Intel"s Prescott is due to debut in Q4 this year on a 90nm process at more than 3.4GHz and with an FSB of 800MHz.
Thiel also stressed that the 64bit desktop is not anywhere in Intel"s plans. This would seem to be an attempt to play down rumours that the much reported Yamhill project is not an x86-64 processor.
The x86-64 denials leave a large question mark hanging over Intel as to what competition they will be able to offer against the Clawhammer/Athlon 64 when it is finally released. Both tecChannel and ourselves suspect that Intel"s plans will start to become more apparent at this month"s Intel Developer Forum.