Perhaps even more suprizing, however, is the appearance of a 1.3 GHz Pentium 4, a speed grade we thought we'd never see just a few months ago. It seems likely that Intel feels it needs to fill the gap between the 1.0 GHz Pentium III and 1.4 GHz Pentium 4 with something, regardless of whatever the relative per-MHz performance of these chips turns out to be. At the same time, the appearance of this chip might mean its performance is at least as good as the 1.0 GHz Pentium III, or in other words, better than some of the more pessimistic pre-release benchmarks we have seen. In either case, this chip is not expected to debut with the higher speed grades upon initial launch, but instead during the first quarter of next year.
mPGA478, Northwood, and Brookdale
Intel will begin the transition from the initial 423-pin Willamette Pentium 4 to a 478-pin mPGA package beginning in the third quarter of 2001, with Northwood following a quarter later in Q4. Intel's Pentium 4 SDRAM chipset, Brookdale, will be initially introduced in Q3 of 2001 with SDR support only, while a DDR-enabled version will make its way to the market during the first quarter of 2002. This is also the same timeframe in which Intel expects Pentium 4 sales to cross over into the mainstream computing segment
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