Intel Delays Highest-Speed Pentiums

Customers wanting speeds in the 4GHz range must wait at least another quarter, Intel warned system makers. This delay is just the latest in a string of stalled plans for the company.

Intel Corp. keeps struggling with its product roadmap. The company says it will delay by at least a quarter the release of a 4GHz version of the Pentium 4 processor.

The high-speed chip was scheduled for release this fall or by the end of the year. Intel on Thursday informed computer manufacturers that the processor is now set for the first quarter of 2005.

"Were taking a top-to-bottom look at all our processors right now," Intel spokesman Bill Kirkos said. "Were making sure volume aligns with our customer demand."

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This announcement follows on the heels of several other delays and manufacturing glitches by Intel in processors and chip sets.

Intel in mid-July pushed back the release of its next-generation Centrino mobile platform, aka "Sonoma," sources close to the company said. The chip set was originally slated for shipment in the second half of the year, and most industry watchers expected its release earlier than later. Instead, it will push the bulk of these shipments until early 2005.

In June, a glitch in one component of Intels Grantsdale chip set caused affected PCs to lock up or fail to boot. That component controlled some of Grantsdales new features, including the circuitry to turn the computer into a wireless access point. Intel has delayed support for this capability until the end of the year.

Click here to read about Intels latest earnings report.

Meanwhile, in other Intel news, sources said the company will expand the Pentium 4s onboard cache memory from 1MB to 2MB. The move is expected sometime in 2005, about a year after the company raised cache capacity from 512K to 1MB with the introduction of the Prescott processor series of processors.

Intel declined to comment on unannounced processors.

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