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Intel's rival's desktop chips, which form part of its Phenom lineup, are set to debut in the first quarter of 2008. The announcement detailing their arrival comes just a week after AMD's much-awaited and delayed quad core Barcelona launch.

In a media question and answer session following his opening keynote, Paul Otellini, the chip company's chief executive was asked whether Intel saw any advantages in putting three cores on a single die.

Otellini's answer was short but to the point. "We see a distinct advantage in having all the

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cores on our die work," he said, no doubt alluding to the fact that AMD's triple core offering will be quad-core with one core disabled.

AMD's attempts to competitively outwit Intel aren't affecting the latter's own plans, which remain very much business as usual, Diane Bryant, vice president of Intel's digital enterprise group and general manager of its server platforms group, claimed in an interview last week.

But AMD remains ambitious about its appetite for market share. "With our advanced multi-core architecture, AMD is in a unique position to enable a wider range of premium desktop solutions, providing a smarter choice for customers and end users," said Greg White, vice president and general manager of AMD's desktop division on the day of the triple core announcement.

"This innovation is a direct result of our development of the industry's first true, native quad-core design coupled with AMD's manufacturing flexibility to create multi-core processors in two, three, and four computational core configurations on a single die of silicon."