Intel introduced the x86 back in the early ' 80s. It was many years later that competitors arrived, like AMD & Cyrix. Intel always had the reputation of producing the fastest, most powerful and most reliable microprocessors. These days Intel is in a nastly situation... More competitors have arrived (WinChip & Rise) and AMD's marketshare is increasing. The Pentium III design is, untill now, not very different from the Pentium II. And negative publicity about an electronic serialnumber inside the Pentium III has not done much good. The fastest pentium III processor features 550Mhz. Intel has stopped production of Pentium II processors (excluding Celeron systems). The 'slot 1' (=the place where a processor connects to a motherboard) technology is used for Pentium II/III systems, which eliminates the bottleneck with the socket. Intel processor are best known for their superior quality and powerfull FPU (=mathetical) performance (great for gaming). There is a price tag on that, however. Intel will release a PPGA version of the Pentium III later this year. PPGA is a socket format that is also used for Celeron systems. Later this year, the JX chipset will be presented that will have a 133MHz bus and 4x AGP support. A processor codenamed 'Williamette' might be released early 2000. Its speed will be 800-1200Mhz! Intel has also designed a new processor architecture that intends to replace the popular x86. This is called IA-64 (codenamed 'Merced'). This CPU will probably be compatible with x86 instructions, but not for long.