Chipzilla has ordered its plant in Israel, Fab 18, to drop everything and produce 5000 Pentium 4 wafers - each containing around 200 little P4s - within six weeks.

Sources close to Fab 18 tell The Reg that these chips will be rated at 1.7GHz.

Fab 18 is used to dealing with abrupt U-turns. Until March, the plant had been churning out loads of Timna system on a chip (SoC) processors, but switched over to Pentium IIIs in early April and has shipped 10 million Coppermines since then. [So how come there's still a shortage? - Ed].

The halt on Timna production again calls into question Intel's commitment to the SoC concept. Factions within the chip giant have long looked down their noses at SoC processors as the sort of thing imitators did and regarded them as not worthy of attention.

Apparently, there's only one stepper at Fab 18 capable of etching P4 wafers, so it looks like at least one employee is in for some serious overtime. ®