1999: Year of the Celeron?

The celery jokes have ended. With the introduction Monday of new 366 and400 MHz Celeron processors, Intel's low-end microprocessor takes a seriousstep up in performance while retaining the pricing edge of its predecessors. And on the heels of this announcement are plans by virtuallyevery major PC maker--including Dell, Compaq, and HP--to make computersbased around these exciting new chips.

The Intel Celeron is designed for systems costing $1200 or less, while offering the same P6 core used in the Pentium II and Pentium II Xeonprocessors. And unlike early Celerons, which didn't include any L2 cache,newer (300 MHz+) models feature 128K of L2 cache which runs at the fullspeed of the processor: This allows cheap Celeron-based computers to runalmost as fast as comparable Pentium II systems.

Current Celeron processors use the Slot 1 "cartridge" now employed by thePentium II though future Celerons will switch back to a cheaper pin-basedchip, making such systems even cheaper. The first non-Slot 1 Celeron chipsare expected later this year