Perhaps, considerably later than expected, but Advanced Micro Devices, the world’s second largest maker of x86 microprocessors, has quietly released its first dual-core AMD Sempron central processing unit (CPU). The chips will be initially available only in China, but it will hardly take long before they emerge in other countries and regions.

The first AMD Sempron processor with two processing engines is made using 65nm process technology and operates at 1.80GHz, reports DigiTimes web-site. The chip retails for about $55, which is below the price of the fastest single-core AMD Sempron LE 1300 microprocessor that operates at 2.30GHz, has 256KB of L2 cache and is priced at $69 in business quantities.

Intel Corp. unveiled its first Intel Celeron central processing units with two cores back in January ’08, however, for quite some time the world’s largest maker of x86 CPUs has been shipping dual-core Intel Pentium D and Intel Core 2 Duo processors at truly affordable price-points. On the other hand, AMD has been offering its AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ processor for $68 for some time now.

It is a natural trend for desktop microprocessors to gain the number of cores as more and more software developers tend to optimize their applications to take advantage of multiple processing engines.

Officials from AMD did not comment on the news-story.