The spate of Coppermine Pentium IIIs that Intel will intro on January 10th next will walk hand-in-hand into the daylight with last .25 micron Celeron processor ever, a 533MHz using the 66MHz bus and with a multiplier of eight. That will, most likely, be the last appearance of a .25 micron Celeron on the Intel stage, before it and other members of the family go to slaughterhouse five, where all old chips end up as members of Chipzilla's embedded family. As reported earlier this year, the Brave New World of the Celeron III in .18 micron technology will start relatively swiftly in the new year, as the chip mammoth seeks quickly to make .25 micron microprocessors relics of an age long gone. However, many observers wonder just why Intel is rolling out this eight-multiplied Celeron 533, when it could have released it very much earlier. The answer, as with many of these questions, is more to do with marchitecture than architecture. As we have already noted, chip rival AMD has the ability to scale Athlons now, but wants to get the maximum bucks out of its current range. And, in this respect, it is exactly similar to Intel, although not as fiendishly cunning in its pricing strategies. ® See also Intel to intro 750MHz CuMine PIII on Jan 10th