Reports on German and some US newswires are suggesting that Intel may be bringing forward the launch of some of its mobile processors in a bid to scotch competition from AMD and Transmeta.

We know for certain from recent communications to its distributor and dealer panel that Intel is still hell-bent on making a heap of price changes at the end of the month, but, according to Computerwoche yesterday, Intel is likely to annouce its low voltage (LV) Pentium III 500 and its Celeron LV 500 as early as next week.

The former chip is equipped with Intel's SpeedStep technology but it appears the firm still has no plans to migrate the battery saving circuitry to its Celeron platform throughout 2001.

There is no reason why Intel couldn't migrate the technology to the mobile Celeron platform apart from the fact it is able to currently command a premium for the SpeedStep enabled chips.

As we reported here, the LV processors were scheduled to make an appearance in the same week as the big price drops across the Intel range.

So if they have been advanced, it is only by a matter of days. Because of the SpeedStep technology, Intel is likely to focus on the fact that the Pentium III notebook chip, at least, falls below the 1V barrier, and that will allow it to scoff at Transmeta and also blow its own technology trumpet.

As we also predicted in the same piece above, Intel will intro a 1GHz mobile Pentium III this year, and this will also use SpeedStep technology. ®

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