After an incremental clock speed jump, Intel retakes the budget-line processor speed crown away from AMD's K6-2/533 (See where it scores here).  This follows last year's 800MHz clock topping Pentium-III.

Not to be outdone for too long, AMD will be officially announcing their newest 800MHz Athlon anytime now.

The 800MHz battle rages on as Intel throws its server and workstation processor into the ring.

See where it stacks up against Athlon's clockspeed match.

Intel launches a pre-emptive strike against Transmeta--before even knowing what they'll be up against--with the unveiling of their new SpeedStep mobile Pentium-III processors. Plug 'em in, they speed up; unplug 'em, they slow down (to a mere 500MHz). Kind o' like my razor.

Perhaps smarting from Transmeta's Crusoe announcement making their SpeedStep technology look like a light switch, Intel has redirected its anger to familiar territory, preferring to litigate rather than innovate in the processor market.

By asking the US International Trade Commission to ban imports of VIA's chipsets supporting 133MHz SDRAM, Intel is almost admitting its failure to adequately compete using much-touted RDRAM or Rambus memory. In response, VIA just continues to supply increasingly better chips, letting you decide--rather than a courtroom.

Although Intel's highest speed processors have always seemed to have been in short supply during the last few months, their newest Pentium-III 550MHz processors built on flip-chips look to be delayed until the end of February. Other sources claim the delay will affect other Pentiums, as well.

Watch for Pentium system prices to hold steady or even climb during the next few weeks.

As AMD demonstrated earlier this year, Athlon processors running at 1GHz are available now, given sufficient cooling. Both Intel and IBM will describe how they will reach this milestone at room temperature during this week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco. Even more of Intel's Gigahertz roadmap will be unveiled at their upcoming Developer Forum.

So where is AMD's GHz plan?

Entry-level notebooks get the first Celerons to use Intel's 0.18µ Pentium-III core, sporting a 100MHz bus and new power-saving tricks. Though not exactly Crusoe, at least they are available here and now.

Whizzing ahead of AMD's latest 1.1GHz Athlon demo, Intel showed off its next-generation Willamette processor running at a warm 1.5GHz.

Enough with the demos already! Where's the beef?

Though Intel says it should be a relatively rare occurrence, servers and workstations built using their 820 and 840 chipsets will choke if configured with ECC-enabled SDRAM, rather than the pricier RDRAM.

Intel is working to solve these problems with computer makers, but one has to wonder how committed Intel really is to support systems based on the older SDRAM technology, after it has been pushing RAMBus for so long.

Intel started it; AMD followed by deeply slashing processor prices up to 40%, both preparing for faster chip introductions in March.

Intel's first 'special edition' (read: impossible to find) 1GHz Pentium-III is coming Wednesday, according to 'sources', though not expected in volume production until July.

We usually dislike vapour news, but this was too good to pass by. Will AMD beat Intel to the mark? Should they? A certain Tortoise and Hare fable comes to mind...

As expected, Intel announced their 'special edition' 1GHz Pentium-III today. Great performance, but desktops using it are high-priced given its 'limited quantity' status. Don't expect one in a computer store near you until Q3.

After rumours of a possible Athlon upset, Gates and Microsoft have renewed their faith in their old partner Intel. Expected in the fall of 2001, the X-Box will boast whatever Intel processor provides the most console gaming for the least price at that time.

Initially reported by some Toshiba notebook owners, other laptops with Intel's 400MHz mobile Celerons and Pentium-II's using Mobile Module One connectors may be unstable and shut down unexpectedly. The flaw is not with the CPU, but an over-voltage protection switch on the processor's daughter card that seems to trip accidentally. Check with your manufacturer if you suspect you have this problem.

Two new Intel Celerons based on the Coppermine core will be arriving at 566 and 600MHz. AMD will soon follow with the K6-2+ for notebooks and eventually, Spitfire.

As promised, Intel unveiled two new Celerons based on the Coppermine-128 core. Check out the fastest Celeron yet.

No--really?

Intel added an incremental speed increase--866MHz--to their Xeon line, at a significantly lower price than their previous Xeon announcement. Looks like Intel is hedging against AMD's Mustang already.

Despite what is usually a slower CPU demand season--the traditionally slack prelude to the back-to-school and Christmas quarters--AMD announced that all available Athlon and K6-2 processors are spoken for until June, due to a manufacturing capacity deficit. Intel's shortage problems continue to be evidenced by a two-month delay in 633- and 677-MHz Celerons that had been expected next week.

Until now, AMD has been benefiting from processor shortages that have been plaguing Intel since their introduction of the Coppermine last fall. Now both are affected, though it certainly has not hurt the profitability of either Intel or AMD. And no slowdown in demand is in sight. If you are in the market for a computer, better act soon or wait until the fall, when new chips and increased production should start to catch up. Price cuts are likely to wither for the next few months.

With two new mobile chips: a 550/700MHz (SpeedStep) mobile Pentium-III and a 550MHz mobile Celeron, Intel hopes to allay production concerns of its fastest desktop CPUs by ramping up its mobile lines.

Seeing the error of their ways, Intel plans to phase out the largely ineffectual and always controversial CPU tracking ID, starting with their next processor lines.

'Bout time.

With their new all-in-one (CPU, graphics, memory controller) Celeron 'Timna', Intel hopes to make PC's cheaper and even more disposable.

Might be the newbie wave of the future, if start-ups like Virage are any indication.

In a nod to Linux and the rest of the open-source community, Intel opened the usually secretive inner workings of its upcoming 64-bit Itanium (formerly 'Merced') processor.

Itanium's 64-bit instruction set is not natively backward-compatible with that of today's 32-bit x86 processors. Although it will likely launch at 800+MHz, there are doubts as to whether its x86-emulator will run current 32-bit software (such as Windows) any faster than a Pentium-II. With today's exposure, Intel wants to get the industry's 64-bit coders on board before the appearance of AMD's 64-bit Sledgehammer which, incidentally, is able to natively run existing 32-bit software.

Sometimes, you're DRAMned if you do, and DRAMned if you don't.

That was the situation Intel was in last fall when it introduced its i820 chipset, originally supporting only Rambus (RDRAM) memory. Amid Rambus memory timing problems that forced a motherboard recall and a two-DIMM limit, manufacturers cried out for Intel to support the cheaper and more reliable industry standard SDRAM on i820 boards. Thus, the memory translator hub (MTH) was born as a kludge between a chipset that only spoke Rambus, and the memory everyone wanted instead.

Turns out now that a few MTH systems (maybe only a million or so) have definite data corruption and rebooting problems while running with SDRAM inside. Computers using Rambus memory (like Intel said you were supposed to) or those without a MTH (pre-November 1999) are unaffected. To find out if your i820 system could be suffering from the MTH bug, visit Intel support.

If yours is one of the un/lucky ones, Intel has offered to replace your motherboard and upgrade--or at least, up-market--your memory with RDRAM. Don't bombard Intel though. Contact your PC manufacturer. Intel has been DRAMned enough for one day.

Intel says enough of those puny 256kB on-die caches of recent times. Today's new Xeon is built once more with up to 2MB of on-die cache, for real server performance.

Rumoured to have been available in Japan and from other Asian suppliers for some time now, Intel's fastest available Pentium-III is now officially shipping (forget about the GigaHertz teaser until the fall). A companion Xeon was also introduced at the same clock speed.

See their scores here.

Intel announced a $2 billion expansion to their processor plant in Rio Rancho, N.M., planning to add about 93 thousand square metres (that's a million or so square feet, for the unitarily challenged) of production floor. That should ease the current chip shortage by...oh, 2005.

...in preparation for AMD's upcoming mega-chip announcement (next week?)

The need for a 'new thermal solution' for the PIII-933, lack of motherboard support for the Xeon 'Cascades' line, and further problems with that pesky MTH make it apparent that there will be no quick end to Intel's long, hot summer. This, less than two weeks after Intel's recent announcement of their Coppermine-933--and before Timna even launches--it looks like the availability crunch could continue until the end of the year.

Seeing the future in less dictatorial operating systems, both Intel & AMD have respectively partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Lineo to provide Linux development tools for Itanium and embedded-chip internet appliances, again respectively.

Intel boosted its notebook processor complement with new mobile Pentium-III's and Celerons that reach 700MHz, while sipping less than 2Watts of battery life.

Transmeta says that Intel's chips only idle at less than 2W, while their Crusoe runs full-tilt at less than 1Watt. We'll have to wait until PC-Expo to see whose processors pack the most punch while biting the least battery.

Although not as expensive as Intel's Pentium recall of 1994, the price of their recent MTH bumble has risen to over $250 million. Of course, this is just a sneeze compared to the $2.3 billion Intel raked in over the last three months.

Part the revenue comes from substantial sales of Micron stock. Wouldn't have anything to do with Micron's increasing support of DDR-SDRAM, rather than Intel's darling Rambus, would it?

Intel launches another attack at Transmeta from another angle, unveiling its first web terminal for the neophyte net-surfer. With a Celeron-400, 32Mb of RAM, a 4.3Gb drive, 56k modem, and a 14" (they still make those?) monitor, the Dot.Station hopes to woo web wonderers into friendly Internet Land.

--All aBOARD!?

In response to AMD's recent Duron unveiling, Intel pumps its Celerons to 700MHz, too.

See where they rate right here.

Promised to be available by the end of the year, Intel's Pentium 4 (formerly 'Willamette') will debut at 1.4GHz with a 400MHz bus.

Hmmm... Pentium... Pentium II... Pentium III... Pentium--4? What, Intel couldn't copyright the 'V' in 'IV'? Or is there some roman-numeral counting glitch in Willamette we shouldn't know about?

VIA paid Intel an unspecified lump sum to have them drop their chip set lawsuit. It all started last fall when VIA started shipping Celeron- and Pentium-compatible chip sets that used faster PC133 SDRAM. Intel had poo-pooed PC133 in favour of its darling Rambus memory, and brought the suit against VIA only when it became evident that computer makers were reluctant to adopt Intel-RDRAM chip sets, preferring VIA's cheaper SDRAM solutions.

VIA's chip set success must have them swimming in extra cash, which Intel needs right now to help cover its MTH recall. The settlement should be good for VIA too, hopefully allowing them to forge into compatible DDR-SDRAM chip sets without Intel's encumbrance.

According to Intel's own Pentium-III benchmarks, their newest i815E chipset supporting PC133 SDRAM provides up to 5% more performance than an i820 chipset using Rambus RDRAM in the majority of tests.

That's gotta hurt, considering Intel's unwavering commitment to Rambus for its next Pentium-4 chips.

Though mostly good intentions and PR puff at the moment, AMD is apparently planning to have their 1GHz 'Corvette' Athlons in notebooks by Q1 2001. Low-power Durons will be available for mobile managers by the end of this year.

Intel, on the other hand, appears not to have any GHz notebook chips in its roadmap until Q2 next year.

In preparation for their expected 1.1GHz Pentium-III launch at the end of July, Intel has again cut some of its Xeon and Pentium-III prices.

Just in time for back-to-school...

To compete with AMD's plans for boosting Athlon to 1.5GHz next year, Intel will incorporate a 0.13-micron wafer and copper interconnects into their GHz+ Pentiums, running on a 200MHz bus.

Good to see there will still be life in the ol' chip, yet.

Intel's plans for their Pentium-4 and related chipsets have included support only for expensive Rambus memory--until now. Bowing to market pressure, Intel admits they will need to also include support for industry standard PC133 SDRAM in Pentium-4 systems.

Smart move. Though Rambus must feel like it's been kicked in the face--again. Not that we should be worried about them, as Rambus claims they own all other kinds of memory, including PC133.

With their latest Pentium-III unveiling at 1.13GHz, Intel once again slaps AMD and their recent Thunderbird into second place. Just don't try to buy one, as they will be only available "in limited quantities" [read: nowhere]. Expect AMD's response by the end of August.

Meanwhile, check out where the new Coppermine scores...

Intel's marketeers coin 'NetBurst' to describe the architecture of their up-coming Pentium-4 CPU. Although planning to enter the scene at 1.4GHz, VP Albert Yu demonstrated a 2GHz prototype at this fall's Intel Developer Forum. The new design will include a 'Rapid Execution Engine' running at twice the main processor speed to enhance internet apps. AnandTech has the scoop on the details.

Let's just hope Intel puts a 'Rapid Execution Engine' onto its production lines, so we might actually see the first Pentium-4's before the end of the year.

Finally catching up to Coppermine, Intel announced its new 1GHz Xeon. Although it's one of the cache-poor (only 256kB of L2) designs available in one- or two-processor configurations only, Intel is still proud. At least it's priced right--comparable to the nearly-invisible Pentium-III 933.

Rather than debut at the expected--but not shabby--800MHz clock speed, Intel admitted that its coming 64-bit Itanium is not quite ramping up as quickly as hoped. The first Itaniums should still be available by the end of this year, but at the slower speed of  733MHz.

Suffering repeated crashes and lock-ups, Intel's newest Pentium-III at 1.13GHz has been recalled back to the drawing board almost as hastily as it was rushed into its press release.

Like every other discontinued CPU we still list on our CPU Scorecard for reference purposes, Intel's fastest flop will also remain (just for you, Nelson). We suspect we'll see the Coppermine 1.13GHz again--when it's finished.

To push acceptance and lower the price point of its upcoming, $RDRAM$-only Pentium-4's, Intel itself will offer rebates to wealthy (and brave), early adopters.

Perhaps all this rebate money is expected to come from Intel-partner Rambus' latest lawsuit.

As part of its fall product launch preview, Dell demonstrated an Itanium-733MHz workstation running a "functional" alpha version of Microsoft's upcoming 64-bit Whistler OS. Pilot Itanium systems are expected to be available by the end of the year, while production models will not be ready until next year--no matter what Intel's road map says.

Trying to mitigate their recent revenue warning, Intel introduced two new mobile SpeedStepping Pentium-III's at 800 & 850MHz, and a mobile Celeron matching its top speed desktop cousin at 700MHz.

Originally rumoured to be appearing this Halloween, Intel's new Pentium-4 wunderchip is now said to be arriving most likely in late November.

OK, so another Intel chip delay is not really news. Just thought we'd warn you now, however, in case you were thinking of actually giving a Pentium-4 system to--uh--someone "special" (like yourself) this Christmas.

Intel pulled the plug on their long-planned Timna system-on-chip for low-cost PC's. It finally brings to an end a sad tale of too many delays (until at least 2001), too expensive Rambus memory (low-cost RDRAM? yeah, right...), and too slow speeds (only 600MHz).

Now, hopefully, Intel can concentrate its efforts on pulling off a flawless Pentium-4 launch. They need one.

Immediately after their Pentium-III 1.13GHz debacle, Intel had suggested that the problem chip might be reintroduced (once the bugs were worked out, of course) as early as this month. It's not gonna happen, however. Try next year.

We predict that Intel's fallen hero will only appear again if Pentium-4 seriously tanks, which is not likely. There is just too much inertia behind Pentium-4 and Intel is betting the PC farm on it. Although it is doubtful we will ever see a 1+GHz Pentium-III again in any volume, it will still appear in our CPU Scorecard for the sake of posterity. Here's why.

Intel chief exec Craig Barrett admits that their long-held near-exclusive relationship with Rambus has been a mistake. It would have been better to have chosen an innovator rather than a toll collector as a technology partner.

Guerrilla marketing at its finest! Pentium 4's are for sale two weeks ahead of schedule, but no motherboards are yet available for them. So for the next two weeks, we will only be able to talk about them, without actually seeing how they perform.

VIA take note: this is how you create demand for an unreleased, unproven, (unexciting?) processor, with a minimum of advertising.

Intel released two new Celerons at 733 and 766MHz, although they are still hampered by a 66MHz bus speed.

See the resulting scores here.

At long last, Intel's next-generation Pentium 4 processor is finally officially out of the starting blocks. However, even at 1.5GHz, it looks like it will have some ramping up to do before it wrests away the overall crown from DDR-equipped Athlon. Check out the scores here.

Intel says it can now produce 8-angstrom transistors, paving the way for 1-volt, 10GHz chips within five years.

Considering their recent earnings warning, Intel can use some optimistic research results to keep them in the lead.