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In the wake of Apple's G5 announcement, Intel is preparing to fire a shot across Cupertino's bows in what is looking to become a new Intel v. PowerPC chip war, says a story at c|net Asia. Leaked from Intel are details of its Prescott and Dothan chips. Prescott is expected to be a 3.4GHz desktop CPU, while Dothan will be an energy-saving portable chip, running at 1.8GHz, but with a "server-sized" piece of cache. Prescott is expected to ship in Q4 '03, equipped with 1MB of cache, compared with 512K on the current P4. 3.6GHz yields are expected by Q1 '04. It may also get a new marketing moniker, rather than the 'P4'. Although Prescott will force P4 chip prices down, it will not be inexpensive, with volume quantities expected to sell for $637 per chip. Dothan, Intel's portable chip, will replace the current range of low-power Pentium M chips, also at $637 in volume quantities. However, Dothan will employ a 90-nanometer process, rather than the M's 130nm. It will be speed-bumped to 1.9GHz in Q1 and then 2.0GHz in Q2 '04. As the Prescott, M and Dothan chips will sport 1MB caches, Intel is planning to double its Xeon server chips' caches to 2MB. Analysis: Intel have chosen the cheaper, less effective manner of extracting more from their chips: boost the cache, rather than using HyperTransport and using even higher-octane processor buses, such as the 1GHz bus on IBM-Apple's G5. However, for Apple, there's a downside: desktop and portable P4 and Centrino processors will become much cheaper for OEMs, which will drag down prices still further.
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