Intel scraps desktop PIII Tualatins

THE PENTIUM III desktop Pentium IIIs that use .13 micron Tualatin processors and have 256K of cache appear to have been despatched from Intel's roadmap before they were ever launched.

Sources at motherboard manufacturers close to Intel's plans say that the recent decision to go gungho on the Pentium 4 and Celeron processors is the ostensible reason why the processors will not be mass launched.

The other reason - as we revealed some weeks ago -- is that the Pentium III processors, even with 256K cache, are nifty little performers and it would be very embarrassing if benchmark tests showed just how fast they were.

But the Pentium III-S (for server) processors, which have 512K of cache, are still very much on the Intel roadmap.

The chips will form part of Intel's slim "blade" strategy, and will be a plank of its low power server pizza-box servers for this year and much of next year.

An Intel representative said he could not comment on speculation but said that his firm had made a strong commitment to move to the Pentium 4 platform and to the .13 micron technology.

In fact, these desktop Pentium IIIs only occupied a very small corner of Intel's most recent revised roadmaps,and it could hardly make sense to push them as a platform when the rest of the corporation was saying Pentium 4, Pentium 4, Pentium 4. µ

See Also
Intel's coppa whoppa message mute
Tualatin Pentium III outclasses Pentium 4
Intel's low power Pentium Pizzas
Pentium III close to death
Intel stealth launches Tualatin
Bastard Pentium IIIs outperform Xeon Fosters
Roadmaps, roadmaps