Intel Corp. fired a pair of technical salvos at smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Tuesday, announcing a November launch date for its next generation of chips and showing off its momentum in manufacturing technology.
Chief Executive Paul Otellini told a crowd of thousands at the Intel Developer Forum here that the company"s next cycle of microprocessors, code-named Penryn, will begin shipping Nov. 12.
Microprocessors are the calculating engines inside personal computers and the servers that power corporate networks and the Internet. Intel is the world microprocessor leader, commanding more than three-quarters of the market.
Its new chips boast a 20 percent performance boost and increased energy efficiency over the previous generation, in part because of advances in chip-making technology that shrinks the size of the circuitry and new materials used inside the transistors to keep energy from escaping. Energy loss is a major problem when the size of transistors, the building blocks of computer chips, approach the atomic scale.