SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The competition between U.S. chip makers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices is expected to intensify this week as Intel releases a new processor.
Intel plans to unveil Tuesday a working version of a standard 32-bit Intel processor performing the same tasks as the faster Opteron computer server chips from AMD, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
A demonstration of this technology would be an admission that Intel had underestimated its customers' demands in part of the server market, observers say.
AMD has been winning customers at Intel's expense at the low end, where servers based on Intel's Xeon chip have dominated the category for servers priced at $25,000 and under.
AMD's Opteron chip crunches data in 64-bits -- which is more powerful than the standard 32-bit performance in Xeon and the bulk of Intel's chip family.
Such an Intel chip also will be seen by some as an admission that the company's current direction with its Itanium family for 64-bit computing is not as successful as Intel had planned.
