Westlake Village (CA) - AMD and Intel determined the headlines this week - both good and not so good news. Let's get the not so good news out of the way first: Intel may lay off 16,000 employees. On the positive side, Intel surprised with a capable flagship processor, countered by AMD with a dual-socket approach and aggressive platform strategy.
Intel is expected to show production ready Core 2 Duo desktop at Computex next week and introduce what is most likely one of the most important products in the firm's history within eight weeks. We expect impressive performance from the start - and Intel confirmed that there is room to scale: A 3.2 GHz chip will arrive later this year and we heard that 4 GHz may be a realistic target for overclockers.
And AMD? AMD struck back with its 4x4 platform, which pops two dual-core CPUs on a single motherboard initially and may have room for eight or even sixteen cores down the road. AMD also provided one of its rare long-term roadmap updates this week.
Also not to miss events this week were Dell's portable desktop computer, an in-depth review of draft 802.11n routers and some prioritization issues at the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
