Budget processor hits 2GHz barrier

By Alun Williams

Posted on 18 Sep 2002 at 17:40

The Intel Celeron processor, targeted at budget system, has achieved the milestone of clocking 2GHz.

As well as achieving two billion processor cycles per second, the new model features a 400MHz system bus, 478-pin packaging and 128K of L2 cache. It's manufactured on Intel's 0.13-micron process technology.

The previous fastest Celeron available was the 1.8GHz.

To put this in context, the minimum clock speed for Pentium 4 processors is now 2.2GHz. The Pentium 4, of course, reached the 2GHz landmark in August 2001 and is fast approaching the 3GHz barrier.

Based on 1,000 unit quantities, the 2GHz Celeron is priced at $103.

At the start of the week, Intel also announced a new range of mobile processors. These included five new Celerons for laptops.