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3 GIGAHERTZ PENTIUM 4 PROCESSOR LAUNCHES - An Intel technician holds a 12-inch wafer that contains hundreds of 3 GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processors. The processors are the first to operate at the speed of three billion cycles per second. They also include a performance-enhancing innovation called Hyper-Threading Technology, which allows a processor to handle multiple "threads," or streams of work, simultaneously. Intel estimates that HT Technology can improve a personal computer's performance by 25 percent. Intel begins shipping the 3 GHz Pentium 4 processors on Nov. 14.


FASTEST, SMALLEST INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 MICROPROCESSOR - An Intel factory technician examines a 2.2 Ghz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor. The processor is based on the semiconductor industry's most advanced high volume manufacturing technology called the 0.13 - micron process. The process allows processors to be designed with circuits so small that 55 million transistors can be placed on the single chip on the technician's fingertip. It would take almost 1,000 of the "wires" between the transistors placed side-by-side to equal the width of a human hair.


TWO BILLION CYCLES PER SECOND - An Intel factory technician examines an Intel® Pentium® 4 processor, the first general purpose microprocessor for personal computers to reach the 2 billion cycles per second milestone. The 2 GHz Pentium 4 contains 42 million transistors and is nearly 400 times as fast as the Intel processor inside the first IBM PC introduced 20 years ago.

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