Pentium II detail thin on the ground

The chip, a Pentium Pro core with MMX instruction set incorporated, was given its new moniker as "a recognition of the great equity that has been built up in the Pentium name", said Intel spokeswoman Gail Hall.

The device will be aimed at high-end business users, pushing the vanilla Pentium Pro into the position of mainstream value business chip and Pentium/Pentium MMX into the consumer/SoHo segment.

Intel confirmed that Pentium II chips will run from 233MHz and sport an L2 cache but declined to provide further specifics regarding clock speed or cache size. Intel recently demonstrated a Pentium II running at 400MHz, however. The first Pentium II-based systems will ship in the first half of this year.

The Pentium II will ship in a new single edge contact (SEC) format and sport a hologram. Hall said the new format would allow Intel to keep pricing down and performance up, and would take the company "into the next decade".