Despite the fact that Intel Pentium 4 started selling not that successfully (in 2000 this CPU was used only in 1% of all the PCs sold), Intel is expected to sell over 20 million units in 2001 due to aggressive promotion and advertising. Although at first Intel was supposed to manage to sell only around 15 million unit in 2001. The largest volumes are expected to be sold in the second half of the year, although Intel is going to sell at least 1 million CPUs in Q1 already.
In fact, these are not empty dreams. There are some very serious objective reasons for Pentium 4 to start selling better:

• The competition with AMD is no longer that cut-throat. AMD Company moved the launching of its 1.5GHz Palomino based processors from Q1 to a later date. Now the first Palomino is expected to appear only in May or June. In the meanwhile, Intel is going to announce its Pentium 4 1.7GHz in April already.
• In H2 2001 Pentium 4 systems should become much cheaper. There are several reasons causing it. First, Pentium 4 manufacturing will be transferred to 0.13 micron technology. Second, there will be a new chipset for Pentium 4 supporting PC133 SDRAM aka Brookdale. Unfortunately, Intel can’t drop the prices now since the die size of the current Pentium 4 processor manufactured with 0.18 micron technology makes 217sq.mm, which is quite a lot.
• Intel expects RDRAM cost to get down significantly in the nearest future. Really, since Rambus is the only memory, which can be used in Pentium 4 systems, its sales should grow and hence the retail price should drop, consequently.

Unfortunately, we have to admit that the clouds started gathering over AMD processors aimed at high-performance systems. While AMD keeps postponing its products, Intel is doing its best to think of a possible way to regain absolute leadership in the processor market. Last year AMD was ahead of Intel not only in terms of the CPU working frequency, but also in terms of the performance issue. However, as soon as Pentium 4 came out, the situation changed. Moreover, the working frequencies of Pentium 4 processor look much more impressive and in some applications, especially in games, this CPU easily beats the today’s fastest AMD Athlon CPUs. As for the last AMD’s trump, the pricing, there may be some problems with it as well in the second half of the year.
We do not know yet, how much Pentium 4 manufactured with 0.13 micron technology and 300mm wafers will cost. However, it is very likely to prevent AMD from selling its Athlon processors as well as before.