Intel's volume server processor road map will progress from the dual core Xeon 5100, or "Woodcrest," to the quad core Xeon 5300, or "Clovertown" over the end of 2006 and into 2007.

One to four-way servers with the new Clovertown CPUs will be rolling off OEM production lines before the end of the year, according to Intel Australia's strategic relations manager, Brett Hannath.

Hannath said the new quad core processor, compared to the current dual core, is 70 percent faster, according to the SPECint_rate benchmark.

"Is quad core really useful? If it's on a server it's very useful because many server applications are multithreaded," Hannath said. "If the software is designed to be multithreaded then multicore is brilliant."

Intel claims to have shipped 1 million Xeon 5100 dual core processors "winning market share" from its main competitor AMD.