Intel Selling Server Chips That Have Two Processors

Intel Corp., the world’s largest semiconductor maker, said Monday that it had begun selling a dual-processor chip for servers -- a move that comes in response to gains by rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel formally unveiled the chips at San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. Last month, Dell Inc., the largest maker of personal computers, began putting the chips into servers, computers that run networks and websites.

Intel sped up the introduction by as much as six months to improve its position in a market that Chief Executive Paul Otellini described in July as “tough.” By beating Intel to market with new server chips this spring, AMD has boosted its market share to more than 10% for the first time, according to some estimates.

“Today is just the beginning,” said Kirk Skaugen, Intel’s server platform group general manager. “We’re confident we are competitive, and the first and second quarter look very promising.”

Skaugen said Intel would roll out additional two-processor chips for server computers within the next 60 days.

The chip, code-named Paxville, which Intel showed off at its developer forum in August, has two processors built into the same piece of silicon, a technology that helps computers handle multiple tasks simultaneously. The new chips cost $1,043 each in batches of 1,000.

Current single-processor chips must execute instructions from software one at a time and can run multiple applications only by jumping between instructions from different programs.

Shares of Intel fell 40 cents to $23.42 on Monday. Shares of AMD, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., fell 89 cents to $23.11.