AMD officials stated that the company will launch quad core processors by 2007. Reports show that the quad cores will be linked by a revised type of HyperTransport that can support DDR3 (Double Data Rate 3), meaning that there will be servers with up to 32 CPUs (Central Processing Unit).

The quad core design is similar to the company's Opteron and Athlon64 chips. The server version of these chips will add another cache memory level, improving performance. Cache memory stores frequently used data on the chip close to the CPU, where it can be accessed quickly than data stored in memory.

Also, in 2006 the existing AMD dual core chips will get a slight update to support the company's virtualization technology called Pacifica and a security technology called Presidio.

Intel launched this week its own virtualization technology for desktop computers as well.

As for the 2006 processors, they will require new motherboards, other than today's Opterons require, but the change in the socket will allow future customers to add a quad core processor into their systems, if the mobos are bought in the second half of 2006.

AMD plans to improve its position in the business PC market, desktops and laptops, hoping that a focus on software optimizations will help the transition to future technologies.