Computerworld – For years, Intel and AMD have been battling for predominance in the processor/chipset market. AMD’s latest plan seems to be to push back on economic grounds — to offer high-value budget chipsets targeted at the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 systems, and high-performance chipsets that are slightly slower, but much cheaper, than equivalent Intel products. And Intel is firing back.

AMD’s new 785G chipset, introduced last month, is designed for the mainstream and budget desktop audience. The 785G ships with drivers designed specifically to work with Windows 7, and several motherboard manufacturers, including Asus, Gigabyte, ECW and MSI, are adopting the 785G chipset to deliver the next generation of motherboards.

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PALO ALTO, CALIF.—Any tech enthusiast, and journalist, has to juggle dozens of code names and brands: Centrino. Deneb. Merom. R780. Timna. Whether they be ancient history or a speck on the horizon, they’re usually somewhat distinctive.Personally, I dislike Intel’s 2009/2010 desktop roadmap. Not the processors, but the code names. They share commonalities, so it appears as if there’s a rhyme or reason. But that’s not true in all cases. So if nothing else, I’m going to use this entry to at least try to clear up the differences in my own mind.

Fortunately, Lily Looi, a principal engineer at Intel, presented an update on Intel’s efforts to bring its Nehalem architecture mainstream that coincidentally included the slide above as a reference. Looi made her presentation at the Hot Chips conference here, where Monday morning was spent discussing AMD’s Magny-Cours and the Intel Nehalem-EX microprocessor.

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When you consider Intel’s recent success at introducing new, cutting-edge processor architectures as of late, you can’t help but appreciate the fact that the company is executing extremely well. The cold, hard fact of the matter is, even their last generation Core 2 architecture competes admirably with AMD’s most recent update of the Phenom II, dollar for dollar and clock for clock.  In fact, Intel’s Core 2 architecture has done so well, that further roll-out of Intel’s newer Core i7 line-up has been limited, no doubt in part because Intel doesn’t absolutely need their fledgling new chip architecture to compete vigorously with their rival. There’s no question, AMD’s Phenom II is a solid alternative to the Core 2 but playing catch-up to Intel’s legacy architecture is still not a very exciting position to be in, obviously.

Thus far there have been a mere three different models of Intel’s new Core i7 processor that have been released to any channel, OEM or retail – the Core i7-920, Core i7-940 and the flagship Core i7-965 Extreme Edition. With clock speeds starting at 2.66GHz and scaling to 3.2GHz, Intel’s new Core i7 proverbially lights up anything from AMD’s high end line-up right now, even comparing the chip’s slowest speed bin, never mind at like clock speeds.  That said, the semiconductor business is pretty much a ruthless and relentless game of one-upsmanship; or in Intel’s case currently, perhaps its two or three-up.  As such, you can be sure Intel is looking for another kill shot, whenever they can.

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