Santa Clara (CA) - Intel today said it has completed initial production runs of dual-core processors, which will be introduced during the second quarter of this year. The company also announced the 955X chipset for the dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition and the 945 chipset for the mainstream dual-core processor "Smithfield".

On the opening day of the ISSCC 2005 conference Intel surprised with several announcements providing more details for the upcoming launch of the firm's dual-core processors. While the first run of production is in time for a broad commercial launch in the second quarter of this year, the company said that the launch of the technology would not only include the desktop dual-cores "Smithfield" which are likely to carry a 8xx sequence number, but also an "Extreme Edition" of the processor.

This high-end version will be combined with the 955X chipset, formerly code-named Glenwood. As the 945G and 945P chipsets (Lakeport) for Smithfield, the 955X will support High Definition Audio, PCI-Express and faster dual-channel DDR-2 memory.

Intel will also continue to leverage its Hyperthreading technology of using two virtual processors within one physical processor. In contrast to previous announcements that hinted that Intel will drop Hyperthreading, the manufacturer now said that Hyperthreading will allow applications to run four threads " simultaneously with a dual-core processor.

According to a statement released on Monday, Intel is currently working on ten different "multi-core related" projects.