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Intel's Y2K desktop, server, mobile roadmap

Writing is on all sorts of walls

Towards the end of January, Intel presented its 2000 roadmap for the Asia Pacific region. While much of this information is by now already known, there are some striking features about the roadmap which are well worth stressing. Desktop/Celeron As we reported yesterday, 866MHz and 850MHz Coppermines will now be introduced at the end of February, while the 933MHz Pentium III Coppermine will arrive in May/June, and the 1GHz Pentium III will appear in the third quarter. All front side buses will be 133MHz by the end of the year, while the Willamette will intro at 1.4GHz, as previously reported. What is striking about this desktop roadmap is that Intel is positioning its Celeron processor against AMD's K6 and K7 in the value part of the market, with a 600MHz part being introduced in March, a 633MHz/666MHz Celeron in April, a 700MHz part in June, and a 733MHz Celeron in the third quarter of the year. Intel wants to win the battle in the retail market by aggressively pricing these parts in the first half of this year. However, we now understand that AMD will aggressively take the price war to Intel on the 27th of February, and has decided to cut prices on its Athlons and K6-2s even more aggressively than we have already reported. Intel's Timna will launch at 600MHz and 666MHz in September of this year. Although the Timna will originally come with support for synchronous memory, Intel has still not abandoned plans to give it Rambus support. Server, Itaniums, Foster, Cashcades The Itanium will clock at 733MHz when it is introduced, and will only reach 800MHz by the end of the year. Xeon Coppermines (Cashcades) will have 2Mb of cache at 850MHz and have between 1Mb and 2Mb at 800MHz in early October. Intel will introduce a 1GHz Xeon in August, and, as with the desktop parts above, a 866MHz in March and a 933MHz Xeon in May/June. Foster, like Willamette, will launch at 1.4GHz but will have two way support using the Colusa chipset and 256K level two cache. Chipsets As previously reported here, Intel is adding a 2 RIMM and 2 DIMM capability to its i820 chipset, to satisfy PC customers who don't want just one or the other. It has told its customers that 810, 815 and 820 chipset platforms have to be flip chip PGA ready. The 810 and the 810E chipsets are being aimed at the value segment of the market, while its 815E and 820E (Solano II/Camino II) chipsets will ramp through the first half of this year. Intel still wants to push its 0+2 820 chipsets through the first half of this year, with the 2+2 refresh coming in June this year. And it's still pushing the Rambus solution, as we reported from IDF last week. The consumer and business chipset roadmap for this year now looks more complicated than anyone could have ever imagined. Intel will price its .25 micron 550MHz Pentium III at $163 to bid in the low-end retail market, while it will still supply outmoded Pentium IIIs right up until the end of May. Notebooks At the end of May, Intel will make a mobile (notebook) price move which will effectively drop the price of its SpeedStep (Geyserville) chips to around $200. It will also introduce new prices for its Xeons at frequent intervals between March and May this year. On the mobile Celeron front, Intel will introduce .18 micron parts to replace its entire .25 range during the first half of this year, with a low price 650MHz Celeron mobile aimed for June, and a low price 700MHz Celeron mobile aimed for September. Time to flip the chip Intel is telling its partners that all new platforms launched from Q2, 2000 or later must use the flip chip packaging, with SECC2 (Slot 1), lasting until the end of the year in parallel, and subject to availability, as previously reported here. We now have the prices that Intel will make for its Pentium III and Celeron processors through to the end of May, which we will publish in a separate story later on today. ® See also Intel's Celeron pricing to June Intel's Pentium III pricing to June

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