Intel releases Pentium II

As expected, Intel released the Pentium II microprocessor on Wednesday. ThePentium II is a Pentium Pro-class chip with MMX extensions and an L2 cachethat runs at half the speed of the processor. This new CPU sits on a daughtercard and will therefore require new types of motherboards: it isnot backwards compatible with existing Pentium or Pentium Pro motherboards.

OEMs demonstrated systems using 233 and 266 MHz Pentium II microprocessors.A 300 MHz version will be available later this year