Intel announced its new agenda and planned ramp-up for Pentium 4 and the scaled move to 2GHz by mid 2001. This is a move that is much needed with the perils Intel has been fraught with in the last few months like 820 chipset problems, chip shortages, and the 1.13GHz recall. This will give Intel the push it really needs to re-take the desktop speed lead taken by AMD. P4 is planned for release at 1.4 and 1.5GHz with a move to 1.7GHz in the first quarter of 2001. By the second quarter P4s approaching 2GHz will become more readily available with this chip moving past that milestone in the second half of next year. Intel banks on the P4 architecture to allow for faster jumps in clockrates. The only real concerns from a consumer standpoint, the $1K -$2K PC market, is the i850 chipset which requires RAMBUS memory.

For that mainstream Intel will still be focusing on the P3. Expect to see the return of the 1.13GHZ in a 0.18-micron architecture in an FCPGA (Flip-Chip) package. Starting the middle of next year Intel is moving to a 0.13-micron process which will allow for cooler, cheaper chips and higher clock speeds for P3, P4, and Celeron (with a 100MHz FSB!?!?).