Single and dual core processing units are old news and it looks like the quad core architecture is going to have the market dominance. That is until Advanced Micro Devices will start shipping a three core processing unit which is intended to fit between the dual core and the quad architectures. While there are no hard facts about this new architecture, rumor has it that the triple cored processor will be intended for desktop use and most probably it will be commercially available under the Phenom X3 designation.

According to some, the new processing unit with three cores will come as an intermediate step between the dual and the quad core processors and in fact it will be made from quad core processing units that will come with a defective core which of course will be disabled. Thanks to its native quad internal architecture, AMD can get away with disabling a core from a quad core processor, while Intel will have to start over and develop a wholly new architecture in order to field the new product types.

At the same time, some other sources claim that the three core architectures will come up as a new thing from ground up and that Advanced Micro Devices plans to launch such a product because of the ''market demand''. While the new processors will not be quad cores with one unit disabled, the two architectures will share a number of features like the size of the shared L3 cache memory and all the innovative technologies that are integrated into the K10 family of processors, including SSE4A extended x86 instruction set, 128bit floating point units, advanced power management capabilities and frequency scaling at a core level.

The easiest way for AMD to create a triple core processing unit would be to take one quad core and disable one of its processing engines. As AMD used the DirectConnect architecture when designing its quad core processors, the other three remaining cores should work normally and while the total performance of the triple core design will be inferior to the quad core, it will also offer a power boost when compared to the dual core processors, which are older and do not enjoy the latest technologies.

As Intel does not have the ability to disable one processing engine from its quad core processors and market it as a triple core product, AMD may definitely gain some market share thanks to its ''go between'' solution.