Tom's Hardware are reporting on how Intel are doing with their dual core ventures and also the move to 65nm. It would seem the move to 65nm will be a lot simpler for Intel than its transition down to 90nm.
Intel remains confident that there will be no delays for the introduction of 65 nm chips with mass production scheduled to launch late this year and products to be available commercially early in 2006. According to Mark Bohr, senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration at Intel, the new development of the production process is on track with yield rates ahead of schedule, hinting to a smooth transition from 90 nm chips.
However, on the dual core front, people buying in to the new technology may have to be patient, given that the majority of applications simply aren't multithreaded... yet.
The downside of these new chips, at least for now, is that it is just a "potential". Applications need to support dual-cores and threading in order to accelerate tasks. Admitted, Windows XP already displays this in an impressive way by running multiple applications simultaneously at full speed, but other software is rather scarce in the consumer segment at this time. When the Pentium D (Smithfield core) will be introduced, some users may be disappointed by the speed increase the processor shows in most consumer applications and in games.