Intel ships Tualatin processor

Quiet launch for first 0.13-micron Pentium III

Intel last week quietly released Tualatin, the first of its Pentium III chips manufactured using a 0.13-micron process. The company is expected to extend its Pentium 4 range next week.

The first Tualatin chip is aimed at the server market and runs at 1.13GHz with 512Kb of on-die Level-2 cache. Unlike other server chips from Intel, it will take the Pentium III rather than the Xeon brand. Chipsets for the processor will be sold by third-party vendors ServerWorks and Micron.

Intel has decided not to make a big marketing push with the sever chip, but will do more to promote the mobile Tualatin, which is expected on 30 July.

For mobile devices Tualatin will offer lower power consumption due to the 0.13-micron manufacturing process. A desktop version of Tualatin is expected in August.

Commenting on the low-key launch, Mat Hanrahan, technology analyst at Bloor Research, said: "There is a lot of overlap in the sever market and Intel is more likely to push its Xeon and Itanium chips. There's no point marketing to bargain hunters."

Intel will launch two new versions of the Pentium 4 at the beginning of July. The new speeds of 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz increase the fastest clock speed of the chip range by 100MHz.

Again, Intel will not be making a major push with the chips. It will wait until the 2GHz processor launch towards the end of the summer for its next big marketing effort for the Pentium 4.

So far sales of the Pentium 4 have been below Intel's predictions. It expected to sell 20 million chips by the end of this year, but estimated sales for the first six months are currently just three million.

Sales of the Pentium 4, which currently only works with Rambus memory, are expected to increase with the release of the Brookdale chipset, which will allow the use of standard SDRam. Brookdale is expected to ship before October.