SANTA CLARA, Calif.--In a race to supply the most powerful PC processor yet, Intel Corp. today launched its 1-gigahertz Pentium III at a price of $990 each in quantities of 1,000. As expected, the company said quantities of the 1-GHz Pentium III were limited.
The introduction comes two days after Advanced Micro Devices Inc. pushed up the launch of its 1-GHz Athlon microprocessor, which is priced at $1,299 in 1,000-unit quantities (see March 6 story). AMD in nearby Sunnyvale is also making available 900- and 950-MHz speed grades of the speedy Athlon processor. The available quantities of 1-GHz processors remained unclear, however.
AMD intends to ship "hundreds of thousands" of 900-, 950-, and 1,000-MHz processors in the second quarter and a "significant portion" of those Athlon chips would be at the 1-GHz speed grade, according to Steve Lapinski, director of product marketing for the company's Computational Products Group.
Intel today did not issue any estimates how many 1-GHz Pentium III chips would be shipped in the coming months. During late 1999 and early 2000, major personal computer manufacturers complained about the lack of high-speed Pentium III processors.
The 1-GHz Pentium III is initially being targeted at computers serving what Intel says are "PC enthusiasts," who use systems for advanced applications such as digital photography, video editing, music, voice recognition and 3-D gaming. According to Intel, the 1-GHz Pentium III delivers a 15% performance gain over the fastest processors on the market today.
Last October, Intel introduced Pentium III processors with an integrated Level 2 cache, which has been designed to run at the full speed of the processor core. The feature is called Advanced Transfer Cache, and it enables application performance to scale with increasing clock frequencies, according to the Santa Clara company. The Level 2 cache plays a key role in boosting the performance of the 1-GHz processors, said Intel, which maintains that other MPUs--like Athlon--have designs that keep cache from operating at full frequency.
Prior to today, Intel officials have said previously that 1-GHz Pentium III processors would be in limited supply in early 2000 with a volume ramp scheduled to peak in the third quarter.
--Additional reporting by Mark Hachman of Electronic Buyers' News in Silicon Valley
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