1GHz Coppermine won't copulate

Information available publicly on the Intel Web site has confirmed that the firm's 1GHz Coppermine microprocessor cannot be used for dual processing. Yesterday, leaked documents we saw earlier in the week, said that Intel's Lancewood motherboard would support just about every flavour of Coppermine known to humankind, except for the 1GHz chip. At this page, you can dowload the info. In a table on page 18, a footnote confirms that the 1GHz microprocessor will not work in tandem with another 1GHz Intel chip. But Intel does not explain in this publicly available document exactly why putting two 1GHz microprocessors in harness will not cut it. According to one system integrator close to Intel's plans, the reason for this is because the 1GHz Pentium III uses a different stepping to other Coppermines. As of two weeks ago, he said, that particular stepping was not rated for dual usage. He points out that Intel, in the PDF referred to above, indicates that after 1GHz chips start to arrive in quantity, it will no longer rate processors in terms of MHz. As he says: "Doesn't 'an official 1.066 Genuine Intel Pentium III with Internet Streaming SIMD instructions' just slide off the tongue." There is more to this than meets the eye. If you scoot over to our hardware roundup today, you'll see a link to a page on Ace's Hardware which suggests both AMD and Intel's 1GHz processors are, in some way, overclocked.

• In other Intel news, the firm confirmed yesterday that the 533A Pentium III, using the 0.18 micron is currently being shipped alongside existing 0.25 micron microprocessors, which will eventually be phased out.
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