"As you're getting into more high-performance applications, you need the core count and the applications designed to use them," McGregor said.

Going into six or eight cores for Nehalem chips is a double-edged sword, though, Olds said. Effective use of the cores depends on whether the software is designed to execute the tasks simultaneously across a larger number of cores. Applications need to be broken down into little pieces for distribution over multiple cores for parallel execution, which can be difficult.

But that's not a huge concern, and the addition of cores should spur independent software vendors to write software for parallel execution, Olds said.

Intel started talking about Nehalem chips in 2007. It launched the first Nehalem-based chip, the Core i7, for high-end desktops in November.