Intel is dumping plans to release a Pentium 4 processor that runs at 4GHz, saying it will boost performance on next year"s chips using other means than clock speed.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip company said it plans to brief PC manufacturers Thursday on the latest changes to its processor road map. The main change is that the 4GHz Pentium 4--scheduled for release early next year and originally due out at the end of 2004--won"t come out at all now.
Instead, Intel will boost performance on its chips by increasing the size of the cache, a pool of memory located on the processor for rapid data access. Current mainstream Pentium 4s now have 1MB cache. In the future, these chips will have 2MB of cache, like Intel"s Xeon server chips and the "Extreme Edition" Pentium 4s designed for gaming PCs.