Intel confirmed Friday that it's scrapping development of Tejas, its next-generation chip, and will accelerate development of dual-core processors for use across its server, desktop, and mobile platforms next year.
Intel told its employees and customers that it will reassign resources from Tejas, the follow-up to its current Prescott version of its mainline Pentium 4 processor line, and concentrate instead on moving up the introduction of dual-core designs about 12 to 18 months from its original plans.
The decision appears to stem from continued difficulties associated with production of high-frequency processors in Intel's new 90-nanometer manufacturing process and associated power-consumption issues. Processors with multiple cores would be able to operate at lower frequency while delivering increased performance.
"It seems like this is the way the marketplace is moving, and rather than being late to that, we believe we should do everything thing we can to accelerate development of dual-core and readjust the road map," an Intel spokesman says.
The decision is identical to one made by Sun Microsystems a month ago to scrap development of its UltraSparc 5 chip and instead concentrate on the introduction of a four-core, eight-way threaded UltraSparc 4 design scheduled for introduction in 2006 that would effectively provide 32-way processing in a single chip, says Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight64.
