Intel wants to change quite a bit about its new products and the way they are marketed, moving emphasis away from just raw speed and into other areas such as new capabilities and lower power consumption. In aid of this, Intel plans to design and market its desktop processors in platforms, much like the way they brought the Pentium M processor, a new mobile chipset and new wireless capabilities to customers as part of the Centrino platform.
As a result, Intel will be releasing a Centrino-like desktop platform, currently code-named Lyndon. Lyndon will target both the digital home and digital office, and should be with us some time next year. It will feature Pentium 4 processors with 2MB of cache and 64-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set, and will support Intel's active management technology feature for helping IT managers access inactive PCs hooked up to a company's network.
As far as 64-bit computing goes, the company plans to make 2005 its 64-bit year.
"Intel will "aggressively" bring 64-bit capabilities to its desktop processors in the first half of 2005, said Bill Kircos, an Intel spokesman. Intel previously said it would turn on the 64-bit extensions within the Prescott processor when operating system support became available, and Microsoft's 64-bit Windows XP operating system is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of next year after many delays."