Now most of you know that Intel will reveal its Pentium 4 processors with Northwood core and 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus support early next year (see this news-story), the time has come to learn how long will it take Intel to move all its chips to use 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus.

The Inquirer today reported that the Santa Clara, California-based semiconductor manufacturer will produce about 60% of its microprocessors with 800MHz QPB by the fourth quarter next year. It is very big share for the advanced Pentium 4 microprocessors, keeping in mind that currently approximately 65% of the Pentium 4 shipments are represented by the chips with 400MHz processor bus.

Intel will start selling the Pentium 4 CPUs with the Hyper-Threading technology and 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus in the second quarter next year. The start will be really aggressive, and the source claim that the company will supply nearly 20% of its quarter processor shipments with the advanced specifications declared above. Already in the third quarter the figure will rise to 35% mark and in the fourth quarter next year approximately 60% of Intel’s CPUs will offer 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and the Hyper-Threading technology.

It seems that next year Intel will sell advanced technologies for relatively low prices since all the CPUs with 800MHz QPB will be the higher-end Pentium 4 chips that are to occupy 60% of the company’s shipments by this time next year. Currently the company sells about 65% of the Socket 478 Celeron processors as well as Pentium 4 processors with 400MHz processor bus and from 7 to 11% of the Socket 370 CPUs. As a result, the share of the higher-end 533MHz Pentium 4 chips is below 30%.

It worth to note that the Socket 478 Celeron processors are likely to be transitioned to 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus sometimes in late third quarter next year, therefore, the chips with 400MHz bus will only represent about 5% of Intel’s total shipments.

Given that Socket 370 processors are estimated to occupy about 6% in the second quarter, it is pretty likely that such devices will be fully discontinued by the end of 2003 and the company will only supply them to some of their partners for specific needs and devices.

Of course, the information is fully unofficial and none Intel spokespersons have confirmed it, but it seems quite logical for the largest CPU maker to become more and more aggressive these days because the arch-rival AMD with its Athlon 64 and Opteron processors is as strong as it has never been.