For those readers who like that sort of thing, Hardware Central has posted some pictures reputed to be of an early sample Willamette. The pictures are of the usual electronic quality - ie. complete crap - but that didn't put off our resident semiconductor sleuth from poring over them with a magnifying glass.

The conclusion he came to was that the pix may, or may not, be genuine and that the chip could be a Willamette and that the mobo it's sitting in might be an early Intel sample using the i850 chipset.

Willamette samples are indeed out there - we know that Intel boffins in Europe have at least one 1.4GHz one to play with (runs very hot, apparently), so we somehow doubt that the Hardware Central posting claiming that the chip runs at 1.8GHz is entirely accurate.

Of course, if someone out there has a genuine Willamette they'd like to talk to us about, you know where we are. ®