Intel responds to AMD threat with massive price cuts and speed increases

Intel will cut CPU prices 25-30% at the end of April (compared to the moretypical 10-20% quarterly price cuts) in an effort to stave off competitionfrom AMD, who recently introduced the K6 CPU. Currently, the K6 beats most existing Intel CPUs and even equals the performance of the Pentium II, a Pentium Pro-class chip with MMX due in May. The K6 is priced much lowerthan comparable Pentium, Pentium Pro, and Pentium II CPUs.

Intel isn't sitting still in the speed competition, either: the companywill introduce 300 and 366 MHz versions of the next Pentium II (code-named "Deschutes") in 1998. A Notebook version of Deschutes will run as fast as 266 MHz next year as well. High-end servers in 1998 will featuretwo to four 366 MHz CPUs, each with at least 1 MB of cache. CurrentPentium Pros ship with 256 or 512K of cache