by Anton Shilov
10/08/2002 | 03:14 PM
It seems that the date of the Pentium 4 3.06GHz official announcement has been unveiled. According to this web-site, Intel plans to reveal the new CPU on the 14th of November. The newcomer will be the most powerful x86 processor launched this year and will support the Hyper-Threading technology.
Earlier it was supposed that Intel would bring the novelty on the market on the 7th of November, moreover, some expected that the Santa Clara-based CPU maker would announce the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 even earlier (see this news-story), however, it now seems that the company is going to postpone the announcement, rather than to hasten it. <%BANNER[article]%>
In fact, Intel may have a number of reasons to postpone the official launch. Firstly, the Pentium 4 3.06GHz CPUs are intended to be installed on mainboards that meet the new guidelines from Intel, since such processors can consume a lot of power. According to Intel, all the i845PE, i845GE, i845GV and Granite Bay based mainboards are made according to the recommendations, moreover, the mentioned chipsets provide Hyper-Threading technology. As a result, the Pentium 4 3.06GHz processors are unlikely to be very popular among the end-users due to the fact that they should be supported by mainboards, while there are a lot of platforms that are not able to work with this high-end CPU. In fact, the lack of such platforms may also be felt by system integrators and vendors, hence, they may have asked Intel to postpone the announcement so that they were able to get the appropriate mainboards in sufficient quantities. Secondly, Intel and partners now sell their Pentium 4 2.8GHz devices very well for about $500, since there are no real rivals for such CPUs, they do not need to decline the price. In case Intel forces the announcement of the Pentium 4 3.06GHz to happen earlier, they will have to lower the current prices, thus, they will not be able to sell the present products for the present prices, what is not good for business. The third and, probably, quite unrealistic reason is that Intel has certain problems with manufacturing and yield of the high-speed CPUs, as a result, the company is not able to supply such processors in mass-quantities..
Please keep in mind that the information is unofficial and may be a bit misleading in certain cases.