"For notebooks this it is better battery life and for the datacenter it is reducing the amount of cooling and electricity," he said.

Quad core CPUs will also be coming to workstations next year and the next generation of Centrino, also due in 2007, will introduce 802.11n, NAND flash memory, and vPro for PC management over wireless networks. However, embedded 802.16, or WiMax, controllers will not appear until 2008.

Regarding silicon development, Hannath said there is no slow-down in Moore's Law because some 40 million 65nm CPUs have been shipped and 45nm processors will appear in the second half of 2007 which promises performance increases and reduced energy consumption.

"We have 15 45nm projects under way so our execution against Moore's Law is healthy," he said. "This year we had to reinvent how fast a CPU goes and how to reinvent the architecture. We also have 32nm parts being tested in the labs."