Only two days have passed since the launching of Intel Celeron 1.7GHz on 0.18micron Willamette core, as they started selling in some Japanese retail stores in mass quantities. Note that these are all boxed CPUs.

As usual, PGA478 processors from Intel have a very funny-looking package: in the box you can find a small CPU lying next to an immense cooler :) However, this will never harm the popularity of Celeron (Willamette-128). If the prices of the CPU do not grow (it is now selling in Japan for $89-$102 retail price, and for $83 in 1,000-unit quantities), it will undoubtedly find its customers. I believe that the new Celeron (Willamette-128) processor will be a really great match to the SiS650GL, i845GL and SiS645 chipsets.

By the way, let me remind you that these CPUs will not live a long life (see this news story), they should be replaced fully with 0.13micron Celeron (Northwood-256) by Q2 2003 already.