Wednesday, September 05, 2001
900 MHz PIII Xeon Shipments Resume
Wednesday, September 05, 2001 — Server vendors are beginning to ship servers loaded with 900 MHz Pentium III Xeons again after a problem with the high-end processors caused Intel Corp. to temporarily interrupt the flow of the chips.
Dell Computer Corp. signalled the return of the 900 MHz Pentium III Xeons in late August by publishing a Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) benchmark using the chips in one of its eight-processor servers.
A spokeswoman for Dell said the company got a "small amount" of the processors from Intel last week and started shipping systems in limited quantities. Dell does not expect to start volume shipments of the servers until late Q3, she said.
The processor does not show up as an option yet when customizing systems on Dell's Web site.
IBM Corp. began filling orders for 900 MHz Pentium III systems last week, a spokesman said. Hewlett-Packard Co. expects to start shipping 900 MHz systems this month, a spokeswoman said.
Intel initially launched the 900 MHz Pentium III Xeon in late March and servers based on the processor were supposed to be available by the end of June.
Intel put a hold on 900 MHz shipments in mid-April when the chipmaker discovered a problem in lab stress testing that could require a system reboot.
The 900 MHz Pentium III Xeon is the final step in Intel's Pentium III Xeon line for multiprocessing. Those processors are being replaced by Foster, which is expected to ship sometime in 2002. Foster, with its faster front-side bus, will not work with the Profusion eight-way chipset that the Pentium III Xeons run on.
The 900 MHz processor is Intel's most expensive 32-bit processor with a list price of $3,692 in 1,000-unit quantities. -- Scott Bekker
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