Intel is planning to release six-core chips for the high-end desktops and servers in the first half of this year.

The six-core chips will be based on Intel’s latest Westmere architecture and would provide faster performance and power saving options. The chips will contain 1.17 billion transistors and 12MB of cache.

They would be made of 32-nanometer process and will not include integrated graphics capabilities. Users will need to buy a discrete graphics card to work with the chips. The company officials did not provide any information on clock speed.

The desktop six-core processors are given the code-named ‘Gulftown’. The Gulftown processor will come under the brand name ‘Core i7’. It will be capable of running 12 threads at the same time, to boost application performance.

For servers, Westmere also adds a new instruction set for faster data encryption and decryption called ‘Advanced Encryption Standard’. AMD is also planning to come out with a six-core chip for high-end desktops with code name ‘Thuban’.