Intel Core I9 Announced: 18-core Skylake-X, Kaby Lake-X and X299

Thanks to AMD, we are finally seeing the break from sub 4-core era that has dominated the mid segment of consumer grade processors.

I clearly remember in 2006 when QX6600 was introduced and we were complaining about the lack of support for software taking advantage of the extra cores. After 10 years, things have improved on the software side but we still don't have affordable sub-$300 6 or 8 core processors. Sure, single core performance has dramatically increased but the # of cores haven't scaled. Perhaps partly due to the thermal challenges, but more so due to the lack of competition from AMD.

I think we are back to good ol' days of Intel vs. AMD!