Well, today we are ready to give a more or less exact answer to this question. According to our sources, the first Pentium 4 CPUs based on the new 0.13micron Northwood core will be officially announced on January 7, 2002. As we have expected their L2 cache will be doubled up to 512KB compared with that of the 0.18micron Willamette and the working frequencies will make 2GHz and 2.2GHz. The CPU working at 2GHz clock frequency will be called Pentium 4 2.0A (the letter "A" stands for an advanced manufacturing technology) and will cost $420 in 1,000-unit quantities. And Pentium 4 2.2GHz will sell at $610 per unit in 1,000-unit quantities. All Northwood based Pentium 4 processors will be designed only in Socket478 package.
Every time the new CPUs were announced, Intel reduced the prices of the older models. However, this time the price drop will be effected a bit later: on January 27, 2002. We have to stress that Pentium 4 2.0A processor on Northwood core and Pentium 4 processor on Willamette core working at the same frequency will not have very different pricing. Pentium 4 2.0A will be only 5% more expensive than its younger brother. It looks as if the performance of the new Pentium 4 CPUs were about to turn out not so much better than that of the older processors even despite the increased L2 cache that is why Intel didn’t dare to make their price much higher. We would also like to point out that the price of the eldest Northwood will be quite high: we haven’t see any Intel desktop solutions expensive like that since the first days of Pentium 4 CPUs. Why so? It is very simple (we have already told you about it): the production of 0.13micron Pentium 4 processors isn’t yet that perfectly arranged.
As for Intel’s further plans the next members of the new Pentium 4 Northwood family should emerge in early April 2002. These will be two new CPUs supporting 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus and working at 2.26GHz and 2.4GHz respectively.