Intel to launch Conroe chip on 27 July

SANTA CLARA, California: Chipmaker Intel Corporation is scheduled to launch its next-generation Core 2 Duo, or “Conroe”, chip for desktop PCs on 27 July.
The company will also introduce a dual-core Itanium chip “Montecito” meant for high-end servers on 18 July.
The launch of these products marks the company’s efforts to retrieve lost market share and to arrest dwindling earnings.
A spokesperson for the company said the company plans to introduce multiple chips, more than 10, over the next 30 to 60 days. These will include a standard desktop version of Conroe and an advanced edition for gamers and other combinations of features and prices. The chip should be available in the market almost immediately as the company has already started shipping it to certain channels and manufacturers, the spokesperson said.
Intel wants to take advantage of the holiday season as well as the plans of IT departments of many companies for upgrades of their systems in the fourth quarter.
The launch of Conroe will coincide with the introduction of the chipmaker’s proposed VPro platform, which is a bundle of features for businesses. The company has been selling bundles of hardware and software for mobile desktops and Viiv for home entertainment. It now wants to extend the concept to business desktops.
Intel had in June launched its Xeon 5100 range of chips, called Woodcrest, meant for servers. The other product in the pipeline is the Merom chip for mobile notebooks, which is expected to debut in August.
All these new chips are built on the Core technology, which is a successor to the company’s Netburst class of processors.
Analysts say Intel has accelerated the launch schedule of its chip product line following the dismal performance in the first quarter when it missed estimates. It is also expected miss the forecast for annual revenue too.
Industry watchers say the company will continue to face stiff competition from rival Advanced Micro Devices as several high-end PC users had preferred AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 chips, while low-end users have the benefit of buying its inexpensive chips.
Intel says Core 2 Duo chips will deliver better performance with lower power consumption than Pentium D chips. It has also said that it expects the Core family of processors to deliver around 20 per cent better performance than AMD’s chips.