The computer chip producer Intel announced it is accelerating the delivery of a new server chip, named Tulsa. The company sees the release of new chip as important step to outstrip the competor AMD.

Intel’s vice president Kirk Skaugen told analysts the company expected to start selling Tulsa chip in the third quarter of 2006.

Tulsa is a new version of Intel’s Xeon MP, a chip designed for servers with 4 or more microprocessors. AMD made a considerable move ahead of Intel with its Opteron chip in this market niche. Intel has lost Dell Inc. as a privileged partner, and the computer producer now offers systems based on AMD Opteron processors as well.

The Intel’s executive has also disclosed that another chip, named Woodcrest, will be launched on June 26. Woodcrest is a version of Xeon and it will be used for servers with up to 2 microprocessors. The company claims that the new Woodcrest-based servers will deliver more performance and will draw less power than machines that use Opteron, a suggestion that AMD disputes.