We have managed to find out that Intel had truly pushed the formal launch of its Prescott processor from the 3^rd December 2003 to sometimes “between January and early February” 2004. The company will ship the 90nm processors this year, but its partners will not sell the parts before 2004, it was indicated by a source close to the Santa Clara, California-based company.

Additionally, the source pointed out that there will be no Intel Pentium 4 processors made using 0.13 micron technology with 1MB of cache, as we mentioned last week.

What we can state now almost surely, the Prescott processor will be branded as yet another Pentium 4 processor, not Pentium 5 or something else. This time we should wait for something like Intel Pentium 4 with SSE3 technology, since the anticipated Prescott New Instructions got the SSE3 name.

As previously reported, the initial Intel Pentium 4 “Prescott” microprocessors will be clocked at 2.80GHz, 3.00GHz, 3.20GHz and 3.40GHz and will integrate 1MB of L2 cache. Besides, Intel is ready to ship its Celeron processors with 256KB L2 at 2.80GHz and 3.06GHz speeds with 533MHz PSB also made using 90nm technology.

Pricing of the Intel Pentium 4 processors with SSE3 technology will be $637, $417, $278 and $218 at launch, but will be cut to $417, $278, $218 and $178 for 3.40GHz, 3.20GHz, 3.00GHz and 2.80GHz parts respectively on the 15^th of February 2004. Launch date for the last Socket 478 Pentium 4 processor at 3.60GHz has not been set yet, but it is anticipated that the CPU will come in the Q2 2004.

As you see, there are not a lot of changes in Intel’s roadmap except the major adjust of the Prescott processor launch schedule.