Intel Uses Quad-Core CPUs in First Sandy Bridge Laptops

There has been much talk and speculation on what shape the first Sandy Bridge demo will take, and it seems that things are finally becoming clear now that Intel has declared its intention to promote quad-core models before all the others.

As end-users know, Sandy Bridge have been portrayed as a revolutionary step in the CPU with on-die graphics domain.

As such, one would expect the company and its many partners to want to make the best of impressions when releasing the first batch of chips.

Sure enough, the Santa Clara, California-based company does, indeed, plan on coming out in force.

As mentioned before, the first demonstration of Sandy Bridge is going to be showcased at CES, 2011, and a recent report says that quad-core models will be the first out.

While mainstream notebooks will employ mostly dual-core CPUs, those models won't be out until the middle of February.

This will give the consumer base a taste of the new platform while still allowing PC makers enough time to exhaust their inventories of existing dual-core and single-core laptops.

"Quad core goes live in January, dual-core goes live in February," said an industry source involved in the Sandy Bridge laptop plans, according to Cnet News.

"OEMs [original equipment manufacturers--PC makers] are going to be going public with their quad-core laptops [at CES], but they can't go public with their dual-core laptops until mid-February," the same source added.

"A little a bit of that [delay in introducing dual-core systems] is allowing OEMs to shift inventories of the older products that they have," the source went on to saying.

"CES frankly is a very bad time [to introduce products] for OEMs. Because they've now built up all of their systems for holiday and now you have new product coming out in January that has to replace the old stuff and it's not an easy transition for OEMs to manage."

Quad-core laptops are expected to measure between 15 and 17 inches. Lenovo and Acer will be among the first to sell such products.