Kiss your PIII goodbye!
According to a news post at zdnet, Intel is phasing out the Pentium III processor in desktop systems and should be out by the end of the year. The chip will still be included in low-end servers and laptops. There is a new PIII coming out based on a 0.13 micron process, but it will not actively be marketed at desktops. Intel is trying to push their new processor, the Pentium 4, which people have been slow to adopt. This could be good news for AMD with their line of processors, namely the Thunderbird, to take a larger share of the market away from Intel with their processors. AMD has been pulling users over to their platform left and right, espically with the release of the Thunderbird and Duron processors - both dubbed 'Intel killers'.
The only thing that could hold up the adopting of the Pentium 4 into the desktop market, is the use of ther overpriced Rambus RAM. Hopefully yeilds of the RAM will grow come years end, driving prices of systems down. Quite a few companies are now starting to use Double-Data Rate (DDR) RAM in systems, mainly Athlon-based boxes. DDR RAM is a direct competitor to Rambus, so hopefully there aren't the same mistakes made as with Rambus.
