We have already told you about the upcoming launching of Pentium 4 2.8GHz processors this quarter. Maybe Intel has finally managed to finish polishing its 0.13micron manufacturing technology, which pushed the company to force the launching of Xeon DP (Foster) working at 2.8GHz. As is known, it was initially scheduled for the end of the year, but now that Intel revised its plans, the new processor is to come this quarter, as we read over at The Inquirer.

Intel is very likely to be about to put an end to Pentium III-S (Tualatin 512) family, which actually used to be a very good solution, but unfortunately no longer corresponds to the spirit of times.

As for the technical details, we can say that the new Xeon DP will sill use 400MHz system bus and is most likely to switch to faster 533MHz bus supported by E7501 chipset only in Q4 2002.

All the rest of the company plans is the same as always. Gallatin, which is to come to replace the today’s Xeon MP is still scheduled for the beginning of next year. As you remember, this processor has bigger L3 caceh than Xeon DP, and will be available in the following modifications: 2GHz/2MB L3 cache, 1.9GHz/1MB L3 cache and 1.5GHz/1MB L3 cache.

It is also interesting that Deerfield disappeared somewhere from the company roadmap, although it was initially planned to come to replace Itanium 2. Now we can only guess what has happened, though we should always keep in mind that Intel likes preparing "surprises" for its competitors from time to time. As it may turn out that Intel will launch its Madison monster with 6MB L3 cache after Itanium 2, for instance. The price hasn’t been mentioned, though we are pretty much sure that the CPU will be positioned for the very High-End server market.