Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is maintaining pace with arch-rival Intel in developing four-core processors for servers, workstations and high-end desktops and will begin shipping four-core chips by mid-2007.

Speaking at the company's annual Technology Day in Sunnyvale, Calif. the company's Chief Technology Officer Phil Hester said that AMD will also launch a new dual-core design for mainstream desktops around that time.

All four new processors will use AMD's new 65-nanometer process chip architecture, he said. AMD has led Intel Corp. in the move to dual-core processors, but Intel is set to raise the ante by shipping four-core chips in mid-2007. AMD's announcement will now allow it to match Intel's bid.

AMD has also revealed plans to build a highly efficient dual-core notebook processor, set for release in the second half of 2007. Power efficiency is a major plank for AMD and the new family of chips will continue to build on that plank by implementing a system that changes the frequency in each core to match its workload, Hester said. According to Hester, compared to today's Opteron processor-powered servers, the new four core chips will boost efficiency by 60% in 2007, and 150% in 2008.

AMD will use a similar approach to control power drain in the next-generation mobile processor. That dual-core chip will switch the power on or off in its cores, using only enough power to match the demands of its workload.

AMD also disclosed plans to open up its chip design to third-party developers, an effort the company has code-named Torrenza. Under the Torrenza plan, AMD will share the company's chip design with third-party developers, allowing them to develop application-specific co-processors to work alongside AMD chips in a multisocket system.

AMD also shed some light on its efforts to shrink the wires and gates on its microprocessors. AMD's is already making processors using a 90 nanometer (nm) process but by the end of the year it expects to be producing 65-nm process chips. It will move to a 45-nm process by 2008 and shrink to 32 nm by 2010.

AMD is also working on 22 nm technology currently, in a joint research arrangement with IBM Corp.