The first systems based on Intel's 450MHz Xeon CPU will ship this month, following today's announcement of the processor, but four-way implementations won't be out till next year - very early next year, said a spokesman, while eight-way Xeon is still a way off.

The 450 MHz Xeon is designed for use in dual processor workstations and servers, and for 1,000 unit quantities will cost $824, a substantial price cut from the equivalent 400 MHz part's launch price of $1,124. Intel however now says that four-way 450MHz Xeon servers are likely to ship early next year.

At the Xeon launch in June the company was somewhat more bullish, predicting eight-way Xeon servers before the end of this year. Among the first vendors offering the two-way version are Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, IBM, Integraph, NEC, Siemens Nixdorf, TriStar and Umax. Fujitsu itself unveiled an 8-way implementation two weeks ago, but this uses proprietary Fujitsu-developed technology.

Intel's current focus for Xeon, however, seems to be on the workstation rather than the server market: "Our initial Pentium II Xeon processor launch brought new customers to the Intel architecture, and today’s announcement of the Pentium II Xeon processor at 450MHz should accelerate that trend," said Anand Chandrasekher, general manager, Intel’s Workstation Product Division. ®