Some sad news for the Socket370 systems owners. Very soon Intel is going to discontinue the production of processors for this platform, and in 2003 the Socket370 CPUs will stop selling at all. When Intel reported the beginning of discontinuance program for Pentium III processors, the owners of corresponding FCPGA2 mainboards could still use in their systems Celeron processors on Tualatin core with 256KB L2 cache and Pentium III-S CPUs on the same core but with larger 512KB L2 cache. However, in the middle of May, Intel will introduce its last Socket370 (FCPGA2) CPU, and after that all the processors from Intel will be designed only in Socket478 and Socket603 form-factor.

So, let’s have a closer look at the state of things. As far as Celeron family (on Tualatin-256) is concerned, the last processor will be launched in the middle of May. It will work at 1.4GHz and will be intended for sub-$700 system. All other Celeron processors working at higher core clock frequencies will be based on Willamette-128 core and will be intended for Socket478 mainboards. Celeron (Tualatin-256) 1.4GHz processors will keep selling all year 2002, however, by the end of the year the shipments will be stopped.

And now a few words about Pentium III-S family. At first Intel was going to announce new Pentium III-S 1.53GHz in Q3 2002. However, its plans have changed recently and the processor was cancelled. It means that the fastest Pentium III-S processors, working at 1.4GHz, are already out and there will be no novelties in this family. As I understood from "Intel Transition Roadmap", Pentium III-S 1.4GHz will stop shipping in the end of 2002 and in early 2003 Intel will move from Pentium III-S to Xeon platform. The shipments of Pentium III-S 1.13GHz and 1.26GHz will be terminated in the nearest future.

The last swan-song of the disappearing Socket370 processors will be the price reduction on May 15, when Intel will decrease the prices of almost all Celeron processors remaining in the today’s market. The details are in the table below:

CPU	Current Price	Price after May 15
Celeron 1.4GHz	-	$89
Celeron 1.3GHz	$84	$74
Celeron 1.2GHz	$79	$69
Celeron 1.1AGHz	$69	$64
Celeron 1.1GHz	$69	$64