2GHz by January

It is nearly the season to be jolly, for oh so many reasons, but despite AMD debuting a 1.5GHz part at Comdex (see previous story), Intel have got the jump on them by announcing that its own 2GHz Pentium 4 will be alive and jumping as early as January of next year. According to the chip giant, yields are proving very impressive, and it should be no time at all before the core is regularly producing 2GHz capable parts, far and away the most impressive processor ever seen on the market. According to an anonymous VP at Intel, "yields on P4 are excellent and there are going to be lots of parts available much earlier than originally anticipated". So AMD basically has two options; to hope and pray Intel's CPUs underperform in the vital areas and work on a 'performance not numbers' advertising campaign, or to throw everything it has into the development of Sledgehammer, which is already assured of compatability with Microsoft's forthcoming 64-bit operating system. Rest assured though, that the ongoing saga of Intel versus AMD will continue well into next year.