Intel Corp. unveiled its two fastest chips, running at 1.6 billion and 1.8 billion cycles per second, and said that the company would offer a 2 gigahertz chip later on this quarter.
The world's largest maker of chips used to power computers said that based on robust yields -- or the success it was having in manufacturing new chips with few defects -- the company plans to accelerate the timing of the release of its 2 gigahertz chip to sometime during the current third quarter.
The new Pentium 4 chips running at 1.6 gigahertz and 1.8 gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second, are designed to power the world's fastest desktop personal computers.
Pentium 4 chips are geared to business users that run the latest data-intensive software programs and for consumer PC users who run demanding digital video and audio and threedimensional graphics used in advanced video games.
The Pentium 4 1.8 gigahertz chip is priced at $562 in quantities of 1,000, while the 1.6 gigahertz version is priced at $294, again in quantities of 1,000.