Intel Scraps Plan to Boost Clock Speed of Pentium 4
Intel Corp. is scrapping plans to hit a high-profile performance milestone for its flagship microprocessor, the latest in a series of strategy changes by the big chip maker.
The company said it no longer plans to offer its Pentium 4 chip for desktop computers at a clock speed of four gigahertz, a target that had already slipped from the end of this year until sometime in 2005. The fastest member of that chip family is now 3.6 gigahertz.
Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, attributed the decision to a desire to focus the company's resources on other goals. Instead of boosting the clock speed on the Pentium 4 line, Intel plans to speed up the product line by boosting the size of built-in data-storage capacity on the chip -- known as cache memory -- to two megabits from one megabit.
Intel will also focus engineering resources on introducing new technologies to its product line, including putting the equivalent of multiple processors on a single chip, Mr. Mulloy said.
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