The Pentium 4 Debuts

Intel announced today that its upcoming microprocessor, formerly known as Willamette, will be named the Pentium 4 when it's released this fall.

The Pentium 4 marks the biggest change in the core architecture of Intel's consumer processors since the Pentium Pro's innovations were worked into the Pentium II. The pipeline has doubled in length, which makes it easier to greatly increase the chip's frequency. Clock speeds for the Pentium 4 are expected to start at 1.4GHz and ramp up towards 2GHz.

The Pentium 4 will have some substantial advantages over the Pentium III processor, which made its debut in 1998. The memory bus will use data-doubling technology to reach its 400MHz speed, which is up from the Pentium III's 100 or 133MHz bus. Other features include 144 new SIMD instructions and support for Rambus' expensive RDRAM.