Intel has recently started shipping dual core Celeron E1200's for around $58 - and Digitimes reports that AMD has decided to respond by releasing dual core Sempron processors in China.

The 65nm AMD Sempron 2100+ cpu's run at 1.8GHz and sell for approx. $55 - slightly cheaper than the Intel dual core Celeron. Paired with low cost AMD 690G or RS780 chipset motherboards the new processor offers a low cost platform with integrated video for inexpensive computers.

We don't have any information on the cache size of the new processor at this time.

It is considered likely that Intel will drop its dual core Celeron pricing in response, however it may not be willing to also chop the prices on its IGP chipsets enough to be able to match prices with an AMD IGP offering.

In effect AMD is also competing with itself, as some vendors have the AMD Opteron 1210 1.8GHz 2x1MB L2 cache processor available as low as $60 - only $5 more than the Sempron.