The P4s Worst Foe? The PIII-M

Is Intels PIII-M processor too powerful?

Until now, it looked like a smooth evolution from Intels PIII technology to the P4. Intel had publicly announced that the PIII technology would stop at 1.13GHz, giving the P4 some nice running room to get up to 2GHz by the end of the year.

Then, on July 29, Intel launched the Pentium III-M, a mobile version of the PIII based on a 0.13-micron design. Coupled with the 830 chip set, the PIII-M has performance and power features that make it compelling in desktop systems as well.

It gets murky from there. The PIII-M can potentially be used in dual-processor configurations. Later 0.13-micron versions of the Celeron chip definitely can, and both are more power-conservative than any P4 technology available today. Because Intel will obviously undercut AMD on Celeron pricing and because the PIII-M will be extremely inexpensive by the time the P4 mobile editions are released, there might be some screaming dual-processor home systems available that are faster than single-processor P4s.

Whats Intel to do— keep on chopping the price of the P4 until its cheaper than the PIII-M?