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Intel to unveil microprocessors based on XScale architecture

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CIOL Bureau
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SAN FRANCISCO: Intel Corp. will unveil new microprocessors, including one for data

networking equipment, at its conference for software and hardware developers later this

month, as the world's largest chipmaker seeks to boost sales in areas outside its mainstay

personal computer business.

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The network processor and a related semiconductor that directs information in and out

of the guts of networking gear will both be based on Intel's XScale architecture, which it

is pushing as a standard in both the wireless and networking industries, spokeswoman

Christine Chartier said.

At the Intel Developer Forum, the Santa Clara, California, company will also announce

new Xeon processors that are the brains of powerful server computers that serve up Web

pages and comprise computer networks.

Intel will also announce that it will resume manufacturing chipsets for Xeon

processors, which it stopped doing in early 2000, Chartier said. The chipsets connects the

processor to memory chips and the rest of a server computer.

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Executives will also tout Intel's forthcoming McKinley processor, which is due to be

available in large quantities by the middle of this year. McKinley is the successor to the

Itanium processor, Intel's first chip that crunches data in chunks of 64 bits at a time,

compared with the 32 bits that Intel's Pentium and Xeon chips do.

For years, rivals Sun Microsystems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have

sold their own 64-bit chips, which are used in very powerful computers. Performance

details and the price of the new chips and chipsets weren't yet available, Chartier said.

Chief executive Craig Barrett on Feb. 25 will kick off the San Francisco conference

with an address on the state of the telecommunications and computer industry. The

conference, which runs through Feb. 28, is expected to draw about 4,000 people, the same

number who attended Intel's conference last fall.

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