Intel to shift P4 Celerons to Northwood core

CHIP GIANT INTEL is testing 400MHz front side bus (FSB) Celerons which have a Northwood 130 nanometer (.13µ) rather than a Willamette 180 (.18µ) nanometer core, we can reveal.

Sources have seen processors marked "Intel Confidential" which use a 1.5 volt core and even appear to be fitted with a 512K cache.

The current Pentium 4 "Celerons" only come equipped with a 128K cache and have a higher core voltage.

Intel has been criticised for releasing the P4 Celerons with small caches, as we have reported here earlier.

Intel in the UK would not confirm or deny whether such chips were slated for release, but we believe that if there are already test chips out there, it's probably very much on the cards indeed.

A move to the Northwood core for the Celerons would mean Intel is able to shift their clock speeds far higher in the future than using the Willamette 128K core the first processors have.

Intel roadmaps seen by the INQUIRER show that the firm is set to introduce a 1.9GHz P4 Celeron this quarter, and is scaling the frequency higher throughout the year.

But we suspect that if or perhaps better when Intel does release these souped up P4 Celerons, it wouldn't necessarily do so with the 512K cache that full bloooded Pentium 4s have. To do so would put limits on the sales of the higher priced processors. µ

See Also
2.80GHz Pentium 4 arrives in a few weeks
Intel moves 2.80GHz Pentium 4 into Q3
Microprocessor Channel