Chipzilla chops chip

The first Pentium III to die has quietly shuffled off this mortal coil. The 450MHz part has been consigned to the chip gulag in the usual low-key manner -- no official announcement, it just stops being mentioned in despatches. The untimely death -- the poor little thing was only launched at the end of February -- was caused by the inexorably rise of the Celeron range bringing so many bangs per buck that the slowest PIII just couldn't keep up, despite its Screaming Cindy Extensions. If this trend continues we'll eventually see Intel end-of-lifing processors before they're launched... ®