Intel Quad-Core CPUs Arrive November 13

Seems like Intel's dual-core chips just hit the market, doesn't it? (And in fact, they were indeed introduced as recently as January 5 of this year.) Well, barely 11 months later, Intel is giving us its next-gen follow-up: Quad-core CPUs.

Unfortunately, these won't have the same blitz that the Core Duo had. The new chips are for workstations (and based on the Intel Xeon, not the Core Duo), so if you want one you'll have to buy a high-end workstation. Intel Core 2 Quad isn't expected for mainstream desktops until early 2007. Laptops will presumably receive their quad version a few months after that, presuming the power and heat issues are not a major concern (and that's a big assumption). AMD has its quad-core chip on top for mid-2007, but I am guessing they'll accelerate it to try to get closer to Intel's ship date.

I've written previously about Intel's quad-core CPUs (which are actually two dual-core CPUs mashed together on the same die), so if you're looking for performance numbers and other statistics, check out this post on early quad-core performance analysis.