Q: and how often do they generally come out?
A: Although there is no release date yet, the big news on Intel processors is the new Core i7. Here is an article from today about the release: http://www.techtree.com/India/Techtree_Notes/Intel_s_Core_i7_processor/551-92117-889.html Intel releases new processors every Quarter, but if you mean how often do they release new processor architecture (like Pentium 4 vs Core 2) it is just whenever they finish developing it. This new Core i7 processor eliminates the Front Side Bus: "These processors will feature the new Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) bus, which is Intel's answer to AMD's Hypertransport 3.0. Multi-threading technology also known as will also be featured on these CPUs with SSE4.2 instructions. Intel says that they will be capable of handling up to eight software threads on four processor cores." Also, on a quad core processor. each core will have 8MB of L3 cache, meaning all 4 cores will have access to all 32MB of L3 cache. Pretty freaking amazing. Update: I just saw on wikipedia that it will launch Quarter 4 of this year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Core_i7