Intel wants to get them out in a hurry. I would assume they have a longer-term plan, probably around 45-nanometer technology, to provide a more comprehensively designed quad-core.

As I look at Intel's product lineup versus AMD, it's clear that Intel is weakest in servers and strongest in notebooks. So from that standpoint I can see why Intel would want to create an impression that says they are closing that gap.

Tualatin is a dynamite server chip. One of the reasons (Intel) decided not to go forward with the Foster-based Xeon chip was because Tualatin, with its larger cache, had better performance in server environments.

Ten-year plan? No, three-year plan! I'm in a hurry.

AMD will face tougher competition once Intel moves to the new architecture. But it's far too soon to be able to predict who's going to be ahead 18 months from now.

But here the performance per watt is dramatically better than the industry standard and that to me is an adequate motivation to consider Sun. The cores themselves may not be very elegant, but what's relevant here is whether they'll do the job companies need them to do. From what I've seen Sun plans to deliver that.