Intel has published their next roadmap, marking the planned releases for the next few months of processors. The most interesting tidbit from the release was the "Kentsfield" Core, which will be Intel's first quad-core processor. The quad-core technology is a beast in and of itself, and it will start off at 2.66GHz. A lower clock speed than what the original dual-core Pentium D launched at, but something that is easily made up by doubling the number of available cores. On top of that, and most exciting, is that the CPU should be here before the end of this year.
Kentsfield will likely put the launch of the initial Smithfield dual-cores to shame, not only because of its quad cores, but its vastly improved architecture and faster FSB. Kentsfield is a modified Core 2 Duo, putting basically 2 E6700 CPUs into a single package. Great stuff. It'll initially sell for $999, quite steep, but all processors tend to be steep when they are first released.