New competing processors from AMD and Intel

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. introduced its next-generation microchip, codenamed Barcelona, in its long-awaited bid to regain ground lost to larger rival Intel.AMD's customers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are already shipping...

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. introduced its next-generation microchip, codenamed Barcelona, in its long-awaited bid to regain ground lost to larger rival Intel.

AMD's customers such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are already shipping computer systems using the AMD Barcelona chip and the chipmaker has already booked revenue from the new semiconductor.

Intel, AMD's rival, has regained ground it lost to its smaller rival in the last two years as it introduced its own new chips with what it calls a quad-core design, a chip that has four central processing engines.

The Opteron chip is up to 70 per cent faster than its previous chips while using the same amount of power. Also, the chip is aimed at the market for servers, where AMD has in the past few years fared well against Intel.

Intel Corp however introduced high-end processors for computer servers to compete with the new product from AMD

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, said the six new Quad-Core Xeon 7300 series processors can deliver more than twice the performance and more than three times the performance per watt over its previous-generation dual-core products.

Computers equipped with more than one processor typically are servers or workstations - machines meant to run business networks or crunch mountains of data. Such machines are also used for intensive applications, including gaming, burning DVDs and downloading movies, often at the same time.

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