Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, is offering Celeron D processor on its web-site at a speed-bin that is to be announced only in late September. The move may indicate Intel’s plan to escalate sales of entry-level PCs with more advanced chips.

The Intel Celeron D processors are marked according to recently uncovered product number scheme. Currently Intel offers Celeron D 335, 330, 325, and 320 processors, available at frequencies of 2.80GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.53GHz and 2.40GHz respectively. At this point Intel Celeron D come in PGA478 packaging and are compatible with i845-, i865- and i875-series chipsets. Eventually Celeron D processors will be supplied in LGA775 form-factor.

Intel Corp. lists the yet-to-be-announced Celeron D processors 3.40 with 2.93GHz frequency on a page of its web-site that catalogues boxed processors are currently available through authorized Intel boxed products distributors. The Celeron D 340 chip comes in mPGA478 packaging.

Intel Celeron D processors pack 256KB of level-two cache, twice the size of the previous-generation Celeron chips, and 533MHz processor system bus, a 33% improvement over 0.13 micron value chips from the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker. Besides, the new Celeron CPUs also sport SSE3 technology found in the latest incarnation of the Pentium 4 dubbed “Prescott”. While the new Celeron D processors traditionally have much in common with the more advanced Intel Pentium 4 chips, including deeper pipeline and enhanced prefetch mechanisms for Prescott-based central processing units, the Celeron D do not sport the Hyper-Threading technology.

Sources close to the company said that the Celeron D 340 along with i910GL and i915GV chipsets are expected to be announced in late September, 2004.

Intel’s arch-rival AMD recently started to offer its Sempron processors aimed at the same market as Celeron and Celeron D chips. Sunnyvale, California-based AMD now ships Sempron models 2200+, 2300+, 2400+, 2500+, 2600+, 2800+ and 3100+.

Official representatives for Intel Corp. did not immediately respond to inquiry seeking for comments.