As predicted, Intel has today released two Celeron processors based on its 0.18 micron Coppermine Pentium III technology. The 600MHz and 566MHz chips cost $181 and $167 respectively, provided you buy a thousand each of the babies. Intel said it will introduce faster clock speeds of the Celerons before June. Pat 'Kicking' Gelsinger said his company's foot is on the throttle: "Intel is keeping its foot on the gas in the value PC market segment." Gas is the US name for petrol. The chips, again as revealed here, incorporate Screaming Sindie (SIMD) multimedia extensions and have 128KB of level two cache onboard, but the gas is not on the throttle as far as the system bus, sometimes called the front-side bus, is concerned. The processors only use a 66MHz system bus, unlike the parents which spawned them, the Pentium III CuMine microprocessors. Intel claims the Celerons are in volume production at these speeds above, and also at speeds of 533MHz, 500MHz and 466MHz. These last three, however, are at 0.25 microns. The 533MHz Celeron costs $127, the 500MHz $93, and the 466MHz Celeron a very aggressive $73. (Prices are for 1000s.) As we revealed last month, Intel hopes these new Celerons will dent AMD's Athlon model. But many observers feel this may be a mistake. AMD has already taken the price war to a new height and will introduce very aggressive Athlon pricing as well as a range of Spitfire CPUs next month. ® See also Intel .18µ Celerons to tip up next week