Intel Pulls Plug 0n 4.0-GHz P4

Intel is quietly letting its customers know that it has pulled the plug on a planned 4.0-GHz speed grade of its Pentium 4 processor, VARBusiness has learned.

"This is a customer communication," an Intel spokesman said, adding that the company is not planning to issue a press release.

The news is the second time in recent months that Intel has changed its P4 plans. In July, Intel announced that the processor, which had originally been set to ship in the fourth quarter of this year, was being pushed back to the first quarter of 2005. Intel said the reason was that it needed more time to ramp up to volume production its 90-nm semiconductor fabrication technology.

That delay painted the company in a bad light because it followed a string of glitches, including the discovery of defects in Grantsdale (a chipset for use with the Pentium 4 processor), the scrapping of the planned Tejas processor because it dissipated too much power and ran too hot, and delays to the Dothan Pentium M mobile processor.

Those problems culminated in the public release of a memo from Intel CEO Craig Barrett, exhorting the company's employees to get past the difficulties."There are many reasons for these [product delays and manufacturing issues], but in the end the reasons don't matter because the result is less-satisfied customers and a less-successful Intel," Barrett wrote at the time. "I believe, as you do, that this is not the Intel we all know and that it is not acceptable."

Rather than painting today's P4 revelation as another problem, Intel is positioning the move as a way to focus the company's processor roadmap on factors other than clock speed.

"I think we're really focused on end-user benefits, such as ease of use, security and hyperthreading," the Intel spokesman said.

On the proactive side, Intel said it will move ahead with P4-class processors that are fitted with 2 MB caches. Those caches will come to parts throughout the Prescott line during the coming year. (Prescott is the 90-nm P4.)

Multicore processors are also a big part of Intel's future plans; the first such CPUs are due in 2005.0