While Advanced Micro Devices is struggling to deliver its quad-core central processing unit (CPU) to the market in August, Intel Corp. has already sold one million of its processors that feature four computing engines, which effectively means that the firm has sold more than one million of quad-core x86 chips in total.

“We have shipped more than 1 million [Intel Xeon 5300-series processors] so far. The millionth quad-core Xeon chip was shipped earlier this month,” said Danny Cheung, an Intel spokesman in Singapore, reports IDG News Service agency.

Intel Corp., the world’s largest producer of microprocessors, unveiled a number of its quad-core chips targeting high-performance desktops, servers and workstations back in November. Even though enthusiast-class desktops do not sell in massive quantities, Intel also shipped quite a number of quad-core microprocessors for gamers, which means that total shipments of Intel’s chips with four processing engines have well exceeded one million milestone.

Intel did plan to ship one million of quad-core chips by mid-2007 with the majority being server-oriented. Some sources even predicted that 3% of the company's CPU shipments this year will feature four processing cores.

The world’s first x86 CPUs with four processing engines consist of two dual-core dice, which means that they have to communicate between each other using processor system bus. While Intel believes that this way of operation is enough efficient, its arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices, which claims it would release its quad-core chips commercially in September after many delays, considers “native” single-die quad-core design to be much better in terms of performance.

Currently Intel’s quad-core server chips for single-processor or dual-processor machines cost from $455 to $1172, whereas desktop-oriented quad-core CPUs are priced in the range between $530 and $1199.