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AMD had added a triple-core Phenom (i.e. consumer) product to its desktop roadmap. It is promoting all the virtues of other multi core processors – multi tasking, etc – but positioning it, as you would expect, between two and four core CPUs price-wise.
Brent Barry, desktop product manager at AMD, spoke to PC Retail to explain the thinking behind the triple-core move: "Intel hasn’t done a good job of uptake on its quad-core products," he said. "AMD is dedicated to delivering the right technology at the right time."
If there is limited demand for quad-core desktop products, it remains to be seen if triple is the answer. Some commentators have suggested that this move could be as much down to the need to salvage bad quad core yields as anything else, but Barry inisted that it is due to the flexibility of the quad core process.
Apparently the triple core is basically a quad core with one core ‘turned off’ and even if some of the triple cores are the result of salvaging a quad with one dodgy core, AMD is saying that this is an opportunity rather then a problem. Time will tell.
