The first chips to bear the Core i7 name will be mainstream desktop parts meant for gamers and conventional systems; Intel doesn't allude to the expected 3.2GHz speed but has previously confirmed the new architecture's switch from a front side system bus to point-to-point connections between the processor and peripherals, an on-die memory controller, and Hyperthreading that can at times double the number of effective cores working on a given task at any one time.
Intel ships its first desktop Core i7 processors in the fall and will follow up with mobile equivalents in early 2009; workstation chips are expected to continue using the Xeon name.
