1Ghz barrier tumbles down like the Berlin Wall
Intel and AMD both sprint to break the 1000Mhz clockspeed barrier, with AMD technically beating out Intel by two days. Slot A is effectively dead-ended by this point, with most AMD processors transitioned to Socket A. The consumers complained and AMD listened. Slot A was back in the mix. Intel kept up the relentless pace by releasing 1.13Ghz within four months of the 1.0Ghz. AMD follows suit with a 1.1Ghz Athlon. Intel feels the pressure to keep up the supply despite its production and yield problems.

Pentium 4, here we come!
Eventually, Intel officially releases the Pentium 4 based on a 423-pin Willamette because the Pentium III effectively was dead-ended in its clockspeed scaling. Essentially, the Pentium III could not reach much beyond 1.2Ghz due to architecture limitations. Even with the 1.0Ghz, Intel was having yield and supply issues and AMD was gaining on them. Lengthen the pipeline architecture. Quad-pump processor front side bus. Double the level two cache. Add a sophisticated SSE2 instruction set. All these revisions spelled the end of Intel’s aging Pentium Pro technology. Long live the new Pentium 4 “NetBurst technology”, right? Not really. The Pentium 4 could not achieve a performance gain over the older Pentium III under the 1.7Ghz clockspeed. 1.1Ghz PIII and a 1.7Ghz PIV. Analysts jump all over it, claiming the Pentium IV was released prematurely. Intel releases a revised Tualatin core Pentium III as a safety backdrop.

No longer seeing much potential in normal SDRAM, Intel forms an agreement with Rambus to use proprietary Rambus Dynamic RAM (RDRAM). Intel touts RDRAM as the “future of technology” and uses it with their Pentium 4’s. Meanwhile, AMD joins the open-license DDR (Double Data Rate) RAM community. Without a doubt, RDRAM uses very powerful technology. However, Intel’s agreement with Rambus backfires — because RDRAM is a licensed technology, Rambus sips a licensing fee from the consumers for every RDRAM purchase. That effectively raised RDRAM prices too high for most consumers. Because Intel is locked into the agreement, Intel continued producing SDRAM as a low-cost alternative. As soon as the agreement ceased, Intel ditched Rambus and jumped onto the DDR RAM bandwagon for the rest of the Pentium 4’s.

AMD realizes that it has some work to do, and releases the 1.3Ghz Athlon. Intel unleashes a whopping 1.7Ghz Pentium 4.

The Megahertz Myth
Now dubbed “Athlon XP”, AMD’s flagship processor architecture is revised to add more instructions per clock (”IPC”), but at the same clockspeed-rate. However, figuring out that they can no longer keep up in the clockspeed battle, AMD releases the now-controversial “PR” rating for clockspeed. Basically, AMD’s new naming system uses four numbers and then a plus sign. At first glance, the four numbers were often construed as Intel-equivelant speeds, the “2000+” simply looked like it was in the same class as the Pentium 4 2.0Ghz processor. Intel watches closely as it readies to take AMD to court. AMD, however, claimed the four digits are “Thunderbird equivalent speeds”, not Intel equivalents.

All the PR aside, the war rages on, as AMD rolls out the 2000+. Intel pushes out the 2.0Ghz Pentium 4. Intel adds more pins to the processor, as it transitions from PGA423 to the PGA478. AMD keeps on pushing with Socket A. Meanwhile, AMD releases 1.3Ghz Duron to keep up with Intel’s new Pentium 4 Celeron.  The Duron eventually reached 1.8 GHz before being discontinued.  However, the Intel Celeron based on the Pentium 4 proves to be very weak. The NetBurst architecture works best when clockspeeds are scaled and if the chip has adequate cache, neither of which Celeron had. What now? With Intel and AMD releasing high-end processors at full speed, the low-end market was left to a bunch of underperforming Celerons.

Price Divisions — Intel and AMD occupy different sectors
Intel rolls out various 533Mhz front side bus speed processors at differing clockspeeds, ranging from 2.4Ghz to 2.8Ghz. Eventually, Intel reaches 3.06Ghz with a 533Mhz FSB. AMD promptly responds, but cautiously, eventually unleashing Athlon XP 3000+ using the new Barton Core. Feeling the need to keep going, Intel unleashes an 800Mhz FSB (200Mhz quad pumped efficiency) and clocks their CPUs upwards 3.2Ghz. AMD senses the pressure and cuts their prices so much that the high-end was left all alone for Intel while AMD used its Athlon XP practically for the mid to low-end market. The good news for AMD was that it had almost total monopoly on the low-end segment. The bad news was they pretty much gave up the high end to Intel. It all changed so quickly…