Intel Shows Off 22nm Chip, AMD Boasts Hexacore CPU

Chip-making rivals Intel and AMD have a nice little PR battle going, with the latter company showing off a six-core processor ahead of Intel’s IDF conference. There, Intel held up a 22 nm wafer, explaining that the technology will hit the market in 2011. That’s a little more forward-thinking than AMD’s show-and-tell, codenamed “Thuban.” The chip will compete with Intel’s “Gulftown” (likely Core i9) processor next year, and though clock speeds may be slower than today’s quad-core processors, it’ll have 3MB of L2 and 6MB of L3 cache. Best of all, Thuban will be backwards compatible, so you won’t have to replace your computer’s motherboard just to experience the new chips. [via Engadget and Gizmodo]