Intel and AMD may be bitter rivals, but they will both be pushing products they have codenamed 'Santa Rosa' in the coming months, it seems. Fortunately, they two are unlikely to clash: one's pitched at notebooks, the other at heavy-duty servers.

AMD first, since its 'Santa Rosa' looks set to make it to market ahead of the Intel offering of the same (code) name. AMD's 'Santa Rosa' is the basis of its upcoming dual-core Opteron 2xx and 8xx server processors which support DDR 2 SDRAM, Socket F, AMD's 'Pacifica' virtualisation technology and other refinements.

Intel's 'Santa Rosa' product is the next-generation Centrino platform it has in mind to ship two or three quarters after said Opterons debut in the July to September timeframe this year. As we've reported, the chip maker also sees the technology powered more and more small form-factor PCs too.

These days both Intel and AMD pick place names as pre-release product monikers, the better to avoid legal problems of the kind that plagued Apple, to name but one, at various points. Codenaming a computer 'Sagan' and a programming language 'Dylan' both got the Mac maker in hot water in the 1980s and 1990s.

The world is clearly a big place and you'd have thought there were enough hamlet, village, town, city and conurbation handles out there for the rival chip makers to choose without clashing. Fortunately, there are also plenty of Santa Rosas to go round - if any other semiconductor manufacturers, computer makers and so on want one, Mexico has at least 14 available and there a quite a few others in the rest of Latin America.

That still leaves the question of which Santa Rosa AMD and Intel can, respectively, lay claim to. In the interests of avoiding one the vicious spats the two rivals seems so readily to fall into, Reg Hardware offers its services as an arbitrator. We propose the following solution, based on the companies' respective prime locations:

Intel's can name its next-generation Centrino platform after/for* Santa Rosa, California.

AMD's upcoming Opterons can be named after/for* Santa Rosa, Texas.

Readers may like to suggest alternatives, with reasons for their suggestions, but we think this solution will do for now. AMD and Intel representatives are welcome to offer alternatives too, but the adjudicator's decision is final. ®

* Never let it be said El Reg isn't able to support both our US and UK English-speaking readers.