UPDATE: Adding share of dual-core chips in product mix of AMD.

A spokesman for Intel Corp., the world’s biggest supplier of x86 microprocessor, told a conference on Thursday that over half of the central processing units (CPUs) that the company shipped in the fourth quarter contained two or more cores.

Stacy Smith, vice president and assistant of chief financial officer at Intel Corp., said during a presentation at the Bank of America technology conference that in Q4 2006 over 50% of microprocessors shipped by the company contained two processing engines, which essentially marks the milestone when multi-core x86 chips start to prevail over single-core offerings, at least, when it comes to Intel’s chips.

Intel’s product lineup includes dual-core Core 2 Duo chips for desktops and notebooks, Core 2 Extreme and Pentium D for desktop computers, Core Duo for mobile systems and Xeon processors for dual-socket and multi-socket computers. In addition, the firm ships quad-core Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Quad chips for desktops and quad-core Xeon 5300-series for dual-processor servers. The company’s product lineup still includes low-cost Celeron and Pentium 4 chips as well as Xeon processors that contain one core.

Intel's arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices announced during the most recent quarter conference with analyasts that dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2, AMD Athlon 64 FX, AMD Turion 64 X2 and AMD Opteron processors represented about one third, or 33%, of the company's product mix in Q4 2006.