Intel to Unveil a Faster Version of Celeron Chip

Intel Corp. will try to regain its footing in the low-cost PC market today by announcing new versions of its Celeron microprocessor.

Earlier Celerons received a tepid response in the marketplace due to relatively poor price/performance compared with chips from rivals Advanced Micro Devices and National Semiconductor, both based in Sunnyvale.

The new Celerons, running at 300 and 333 megahertz, should solve the speed problem by correcting a key oversight in the older chips--lack of a cache, the short-term memory used to speed data processing.

According to analysts, the new Celeron cache will be only 128 kilobytes, compared with a 512K cache used by Intel’s flagship Pentium II processors. But unlike the Pentium II design, “the Celeron’s 128K cache is integrated on the same chip as the processor, making it probably about as fast as the Pentium II with its 512K cache that’s not on the chip,” said Dean McCarron, an analyst with Mercury Research in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The change should boost Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel’s prospects in the $900-to-$1,200 PC market. But it may also encourage some buyers to opt for a Celeron-based PC that offers performance comparable to a more expensive Pentium II system, cutting into Intel’s already narrowing profit margins.