INTEL is happy and wants the whole world to see that. Actually, this could be a better title for the story, but I'll leave it intact for the moment. INTEL is very eager to promote its quad core CPUs since they are the only producer which has developed a quad core CPU that fits on one socket. As a reminder, if you want to buy a 4-core AMD setup, you will actually get a mainboard that has two sockets for two dual core CPUs. Needless to say that it consumes a lot and yet it performs lousier than INTEL's setup.

According to chief executive officer Paul Otellini, the one million mark will be achieved by the end of the 2nd quarter of 2007. 1 million quad cores may seem a lot, but actually, these CPUs are at the bottom of the list when it comes to production with INTEL rolling out about 150 million CPUs per year. And this number could increase even further because INTEL is planning to open another 3 fabs in 2007 and 2008.

At the moment, INTEL is shipping nine different versions of quad-core CPUs, with seven Xeon 5300-series versions as well as the 2 Core 2 CPUS, the QX6700 and the recently announced Q6600. The CPUs are still pretty expensive, but they perform superbly if you have apps that take advantage of the quad power.

AMD will probably counter this attack when they'll roll out Barcelona, but there will still be a sensible performance gap between AMD's CPUs and INTEL ones. Only Agena will be able to break the silence, because it will come with 128-bit FPUs and much more horsepower hidden inside it. On the other hand, INTEL's 45nm CPU called "Penryn" is almost ready. It's a difficult bet to place, then.