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1 – Intel Core 2 Duo: While our list is filled with groundbreaking products that affected their respective categories for different reasons, no product was as influential to the PC industry as a whole than Intel’s Core 2 Duo.

For starters, in many ways Core 2 has saved Intel. Intel’s Netburst architecture used in the Pentium 4/D never fulfilled its promise of hitting breakthrough clock speeds. In fact, Intel never broke 4GHz, which was a goal they expected to hit at one point by the end of 2005. Combine this with Netburst’s low IPC and you’ve got an architecture that’s basically doomed. Meanwhile, AMD’s Athlon 64 line was not only delivering better performance than Intel, but also consumed less power.

Intel tried to narrow the performance gap by integrating more cache into newer Pentium processors, but this wasn’t enough to make up the difference, and as a result made the processor costlier for Intel to manufacture. Intel was then forced to slash Pentium prices, further complicating matters for them. Things got even worse when Intel was forced to issue a string of revenue warnings in late ’05 through early ’06. The only real bright spot for Intel was winning over Apple.


Then came Core 2 in July. Core 2 was an extraordinary processor when it was introduced. The chip featured a wider execution core, allowing the processor to complete up to four full instructions simultaneously and also featured a 14-stage pipeline, allowing the processor to perform more work per clock cycle, one of the chief weaknesses in Pentium 4/D. Core 2 also includes a single, unified L2 cache for increased efficiency as well as being able to execute all 128–bit SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions within one clock cycle, effectively doubling the execution speed for these instructions which are used extensively in multimedia and graphics applications.

As a result of all these changes (and more) Core 2 was not only considerably faster than Intel’s previous Pentium processor, it also significantly outperformed AMD’s fastest Athlon 64 X2 and FX processors, all while generating very little power. Core 2 came along just in time to save Intel from losing further ground to AMD.

But Core 2 didn’t just affect Intel’s fortunes, its introduction also had a profound effect on the rest of the PC industry thanks to Intel’s aggressive Core 2 pricing.

Unlike previous next-gen introductions, Intel offered Core 2 CPUs starting as low as $183 and priced all the way up to $999. Before Core 2 was introduced, CPU manufacturers like Intel only offered their next-gen processor at flagship price tags, $600 or more was the norm, not the exception. For Intel to introduce a top-to-bottom range of Core 2 solutions at a wide range of price points on launch day was simply unprecedented for a next-generation CPU introduction, and the result was AMD was forced to slash prices on their entire lineup of Athlon 64/X2/FX processors.

Practically overnight the price of a dual-core processor was cut in half.

With cheaper CPUs, system manufacturers like Dell and HP were able to slash prices on their desktop systems and you can now build a pretty decent desktop system for well under $500 as a result, without having to resort to using a Celeron or Sempron processor. This also led to a mini-surge in hardware sales, as many of you upgraded to Core 2 CPUs and motherboards last summer.

For all these reasons and more, no product had a more profound effect on the PC industry than Core 2: it was groundbreaking as a high-end product, but thanks to unprecedented pricing, was groundbreaking at the mainstream price segment as well. No other product on this list can claim this, and thus, when combined with Core 2’s outstanding performance, it’s a no-brainer pick for our most innovative product of 2006.