Intel delays 4GHz Pentium 4

MAKER OF computer gubbins, Intel has pushed back its 4GHz Pentium 4 until next year. The formal announcement follows a month where delays of products and manufacturing glitches at Chipzilla have been coming thick and fast.

A spokesman for Intel tried to put a brave face on it. He said that the delay was part of a "top-to-bottom look at all our processors" and "We're making sure volume aligns with our customer demand".

However the comments cover up the fact that Intel's roadmap is so out of wack that anyone who follows it may end up in Scotland when they want to go to Brighton. Now it looks like many of the predicted chips, including the next-generation Centrino mobile chipset will be delivered sometime at the beginning of next year… maybe.

Meanwhile the company is rumoured to be planning to double the Pentium 4's onboard cache memory from 1MB to 2MB sometime next year. This will happen only a year after the introduction of the Prescott processor series of processors raised cache capacity from 512K to 1MB. µ