Semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said on Wednesday that it began to ship its triple-core computer processor, dubbed the Phenon, to manufacturers.

The chips are making their way to computer manufactures like Dell and HP, though AMD declined to say when they would be available.

Dell has listed plans to use the chip in its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems, with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache, in an online brochure. Dell will ship the triple-core OptiPlex in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman said, declining further comment.

Hewlett-Packard has also listed a desktop on its Bulgarian-language Web site with AMD's Phenom Triple-Core 8600B processor that runs at 2.3GHz, with 1.5MB of L2 cache. HP officials were not available for comment.

AMD last year added the triple-core processor to its chip lineup and said it would be available in the first quarter of 2008. It is positioning the chip as a better choice than dual-core chips, with the third core providing additional processing power to carry out computing tasks like antivirus scanning.

Dell