I own a dual-core P4, and despite all the issues the following article brings to light about the design process, I am quite pleased with it. However, this article captivated my attention. Intel engineers spoke at the Hot Chips conference on August 16th, and went into surprising detail about their rush to get into the dual-core market to try and trounce AMD's X2 (and eventual Opteron). The engineers spoke about their testing methods, processor signaling, thermal issues and more. Commenting on the time it took them to develop the Smithfield dual-core CPU, a mere 9 months, one engineer stated:

"Most designs take years," Krewell said. "But it was very important for them to get back in the game and have a road map."
Intel was quite bold in this plan too, and cancelled some of their single-core P4 projects for the future in favor of multicore.