Is Intel finally catching up, or did they have another thought in mind after all in regards to the server market? You be the judge, they just launched their Dual-Core Chips for Servers.

Months earlier than expected but still half a year behind its competition, Intel Corp. has started shipping server multiprocessors that have two computing engines on a single chip.

The new dual-core Xeon chips for two-processor servers promise up to a 50 percent improvement over systems with two single-core processors, said Shannon Poulin, director of product marketing at Intel’s Server Platform Group.

Both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. launched dual-core chips this year as a way of gaining performance while controlling power consumption. AMD initially focused on servers while Intel started with chips for desktop computers.

As a result, the new Xeon is arriving about six months after AMD’s dual-core Opteron chip made its debut. [Read the rest]