Sources at a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer said today that Intel engineers are working on a subset of the Socket Seven market. If true, and Intel could not be contacted at press time, for a confirm or deny, this means that the company has completely reversed out of its Slot One strategy only to drive back into its old Socket Seven strategy. This may well be a question of competitive market forces. Socket Seven was abandoned by Intel apparently because it could not support high clock speeds. It so happened at the time that its competitors AMD, Cyrix and IDT had Socket Seven solutions. According to the reports, the low-end Intel Socket Seven market will compete with offerings from AMD on the K6-2 and the K6-2+ front. Intel originally developed the Socket Seven design but has been through some changes since then. ®