Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) seems to come out with a new chip every month. Recently, it has released more powerful products for PCs and new chips for netbooks. Now it is moving back to the server market where it has a global market share of about 80%.

The Nehalem chips have more computing power than Intel's current server products, but the new semiconductors will, no doubt, be expensive.

According to The Wall Street Journal, several tech firms, including Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), have already announced that they will put the chip in their latest products. As the paper points out, tight corporate IT budgets may get in the way of robust sales, but that may not be the toughest problem Intel faces in marketing the chip.

Shares of Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) soared more than 28% this year as the chipmaker recouped ground it had lost to Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NASDAQ: AMD). At least five Wall Street analysts have raised their ratings on the stock since the start of the year and there's a good chance that their estimates may be overly conservative.

Just how conservative will be apparent later today when the world's largest chipmaker reports second quarter results. Analysts expect earnings of 29 cents on revenue of $8.54 billion, according to Thomson Financial. Revenue is expected to rise 6.6% in the quarter and 4.6% for the year. That seems a little light considering the expected growth in IT spending in places like Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Then there's Intel's new Pennryn family of processors expected next year and the Nehalem processor design.

"We believe that Penryn and Nehalem will challenge AMD, which now has approximately 12 months to bring a new product into the market that leverages its October 2006 merger with ATI," according to an April Gartner report.
"Moreover, AMD must invest smartly to deal with Intel's capital infrastructure or risk falling significantly behind Intel in manufacturing technology and processor design."

But hope spring eternal for Intel shareholders. The stock will get crushed by even the tiniest disappointment. Investors might use such an occurrence as a buying opportunity because like other tech stocks it will come back into fashion within six months.