Intel Corp. said during Tuesday’s first quarter of fiscal 2005 conference call that the company would ship “millions” of dual-core processors this year, but the really high volume of such chips would be available next year when the company transits to 65nm process technology.

“We expect to ship millions dual-core processors this year and rapidly ramp into higher volume in 2006 on 65nm,” said Andy Bryant, Executive Vice President Chief Financial and Enterprise Services Officer.

The executive of Intel Corp. said the company would provide more details on the dual-core ramp during a meeting with analysts scheduled in a few weeks from now. “Millions of processors”, provided that the figure is below 10 million, is unlikely to impact the market significantly, as every year about 170 million of computers are sold, each contains at least one processors.

“Our goal is to ship hundreds of thousands of units this quarter,” said Paul Otellini, Intel’s COO and President, referring to the number of dual-core chips the company aims to ship in the Q2 of fiscal 2005.

“We are still ramping exactly on the schedule we’ve been talking about for some time now… In terms of the mix 65nm vs. 90nm processors [in 2006], we will update you at the [forthcoming] analyst meeting,” Mr. Otellini said answering the question on the ramp of processors made at 65nm nodes. The comment may indicate that the company’s transition to the thinner fabrication process proceeds as planned.

Intel's first dual-core processor-based platform includes the Intel Pentium processor Extreme Edition 840 running at 3.20GHz and the Intel 955X Express chipset. Later during the year Intel Corp. will introduce dual-core Intel Pentium D processors that operate at 2.80GHz, 3.00GHz and 3.20GHz and do not feature Hyper-Threading capability. All desktop dual-core chips are expected to sport EM64T, XD bit as well as Enhanced Intel SpeedStep technologies. Dual-core chips initially will not sport virtualization technology as previously assumed.