Intel Xeons set to make an early entrance

Chip maker brings launch forward by three months

Intel has shunted the launch of its latest Xeon processors forward by three months, and introduced 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz versions at its Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, California.

Intel has consistently launched a barrage of new products well before their intended dates, a move that has put severe pressure on rival AMD, particularly in the performance game. The company added that workstations using the new chips would hit the market almost immediately.

Lisa Hambrick, director at Intel enterprise processor marketing, said: "We're designing and manufacturing our enterprise products faster than anticipated and expect a number of OEMs and channel distributors to ship systems based on these products this week and throughout the year."

The new Xeons feature 512KB of level-two cache and are built using Intel's 0.13-micron process. The Xeon processors will use the Intel 860 chipset for dual processing workstations, while the company is pushing its E7500 chipset for servers.

However, these will be superseded in Q4, as Intel gave details of three new chipsets, two code-named Granite Bay and Placer, for uni-processor and dual-processor workstations, and a server chipset known only as Plumas 533. They will boast a 533MHz system bus and AGP 8.0 support.

The 2.8GHz and 2.6GHz Xeons are priced at $562 and $433 respectively in 1,000-unit quantities.