After a year that saw only a few desktop processor cores from Intel (Northwood and repackaged Gallatin) and AMD (Thoroughbred B, Barton, Sledgehammer and Clawhammer), 2004 looks set to be a busy year. For the moment, AMD has shrugged off its underdog status with its sensational Hammer cores (Athlon 64 and FX-51). To continue the momentum, AMD will be launching four new cores this year. These differ in terms of L2 (Level 2) cache sizes, different memory controllers (single and dual channel) and, of course, clock speeds.
Don't count Intel out yet, though. The chip giant's overdue Prescott will make an appearance early this quarter. Prescott will see its life covered by two generations of Intel chipsets and motherboards. It will originally begin life as a Socket 478 CPU supported by the current Springdale (i865) and Canterwood (i875) chipsets, and graduate to Socket 775 (also called Socket T) with the Grantsdale (successor to the i865) and Alderwood (successor to the i875) chipsets.
Towards the end of the year, Intel will also introduce its future core, Tejas. Rumour has it that Tejas will have a larger L1 (Level 1) cache size, more integral hyper-threading support, multiple cores and -- surprise, surprise -- 64-bit x86 instructions. In addition, Intel has pledged to continue its Extreme Edition line, so we can probably expect modified Prescott and Tejas cores as well.