Intel will implement higher MHz Coppermine speeds in its future workstation and server chips before it migrates that technology to desktops. That emerged from a briefing this morning with Raghu Murthi, director of marketing workstation products at Intel's plant in Dupont. Murthi also disclosed that Intel will implement up to five flavours of its IA-64 product line, and said that hundreds of systems will be in the hands of its partners by the end of this year, and thouands in early 2000. He said Intel will introduce faster Xeon speeds "a little ahead" of future desktop implementations. The company will continue to brand IA-32 products into the foreseeable future. Intel has already started sampling 460GX PCI sets for its IA-64 line and already has applications running on the chip in its labs, he said. "Compilers are in the productisation stage," said Murthi. "The chipset is very robust and meeting our expectations." He was unwilling to comment publicly on the 840 Carmel chipset, details of which we revealed earlier this week. However, all the indications are that as we said in our earlier story, 840 systems are due for roll out towards the end of this month. ®