By the middle of this week, specifications for the "quad-core" Intel chip - codenamed "Kentsfield" - will be announced along with systems that integrate this multi-core chip version.

According to OEM sources, Kentsfield integrated chip systems will be launched around mid-November. This is Intel's latest "quad-core" chip, expected to help the world's largest chip maker regain market share from rival AMD, which is "storming" the market with Single-core and dual-core Athlon chips.

Intel will announce chip images 1 Also in the middle of next month, AMD plans to unveil a "4x4" chip platform, with two dual-core chips "tied" together via HyperTransport connectivity.

In some respects, the AMD platform "4x4" has a number of similarities to Kentsfield, such as clock speeds and equivalent FSBs; both have 4MB L2 cache; and both cores share the same L2 cache.

Kentsfield will be devoted to video, game, and memory-intensive applications. Kentsfield also allows the system to run multiple applications at the same time