Intel “forgot” to mention its 5GHz 28-core processor was overclocked

At Computex earlier this week, Intel demoed a 28-core processor running at 5GHz to a crowd of hundreds of journalists and thousands of enthusiasts.

Intel’s Gregory Bryant focused the presentation on talking about the performance benefits gained by having the processor run at 5GHz and not having to sacrifice multi-threaded performance for it, resulting in a processor that could deliver the best of both worlds, ending with this:

“So, you guys want to see us productize that thing? Tell you what, we'll bring that product to market in Q4 this year, and you'll be able to get it.”

Intel’s presentation certainly implied that this was a brand-new 28-core processor that ran at 5GHz, and that the company was going to bring that exact product to the market later this year. Turns out, that’s not the case.

In a statement to Tom’s Hardware, an Intel representative clarified that “in the excitement of the moment” the company simply “forgot” to tell the crowd that it had overclocked that system, adding that the omission of the word “overclocked” was the result of a botched recitation of pre-scripted lines.

There’s more: At the presentation, Intel’s graphics for the processor showed a person wearing a gaming headset (seen above), implying that the processor was being targeted at gamers. However, it appears that Intel hasn’t decided on a target market for this product just yet.

As for how Intel achieved the 5GHz clock speed for the presentation, the answer is simple: an industrial one-horsepower 2500-liter capacity water chiller that can draw a peak of 1000W by itself.

A blunder such as this, even though caused by an unintentional omission, certainly doesn’t leave a good impression, especially with the 32-core competition coming from AMD. Intel is yet to announce pricing details for this unnamed product.